Are you considering being a Road Warrior or working from a Virtual Office or both? Many companies are making the switch to having more employees work from home in order to reduce office expenses or to have local representation in regions throughout the country. The widespread use of laptops and the availability of Wi-Fi have made the transition easier to make the switch. Here are a few inexpensive or free tools that are essential for the productive virtual office:
- Skype Account: This free web conferencing service provides users the ability to chat live via webcam or just voice.
- Headset: A quality headset w/microphone is fairly inexpensive and free up both hands
- DropBox: This online service allows users to drop files into virtual web based storage in order to share documents without having to e-mail the files.
- Yammer: Think of it as your internal company twitter network with updates shared among your workgroup
- Evernote: Need a virtual Sticky Note? This is it. You can add e-mails or web pages and access it from your mobile device
Working from home is a great way to conserve energy, reduce traffic and increase productivity. Using the tools listed above will increase your ability to contribute at a high level while freeing up a little time for your favorite things to do.

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