Working from home?

[chworktap]

Re: Working from home?

>In order for PDF to become capable of handling all the complexities of modern color separated image rendering, it will have become PostScript

????? You might, um, want to read up on some of the stuff happening in prepress these days.

 

[Bobmorli]

Re: Working from home?

I use a VPN and Macbook to acces the company network. Have all the programs installed on the laptop so no problem there. Only in problem cases, I take over the screen of another mac with ARD. But as most of you allready said/know -> it's damn slow. For production work, a remote connection just isn't working.

 

[pcmodem]

Re: Working from home?

I use VNC to connect to work from home. If you lower the resolution in VNC then it is pretty fast. This works great when you are connecting to a Windows computer. When connecting to a Mac, I have not been able to lower the resolution.

When working from home. How do you deal with looking at Lasers, the production ticket, or even talk to customers face to face when you need to explain something to them. Even though we are in Prepress this is still a customer oriented business. Customers stop in from time to time or even take tours. Not having people in the building can give the customer an impression that service is not there.

 

[rin]

Re: Working from home?

Just to clarify things, we were just proposing to have 1 person 1 day a week working from home. Therefore, there would always be somebody on prepress in the shop at all times to handle whatever leg work is necessary. Prepress rarely handles front counter customers, and there is less than 3% other customer interaction involved since we have customer service people who handle that. However it seems this discussion topic at least provided a place to have some of you air out your thoughts and opinions on this.

Anyway, all is for naught. Our boss decided against the idea. Evidently he was reading on some website that working from home created more problems with employees in other departments now all wanting to work from home and it getting out of control. Too bad other's mistakes have determined our shop's decision. I thought we'd at least get a trial period.

But thanks for all your comments and ideas. At least I have more knowledge about getting this set up should I ever have the chance to work from home in the future.

 

[chandrou]

Re: Working from home?

I can undertake the pre press projects in QuarkXpress, Page maker and can give out puts in PDF files.
Send me the details of the projects and time line.
Price and rate : as per the market tariff in your place...

 

[jbbbarr]

Re: Working from home?

I control several Macs and 4 Rampage boxes with LogMeIn and have no problems like the other poster. It's not that bad and I like it better than ARD, plus it's free. When I need files transferred I just ftp them to myself. I am going to switch over to pro version, I think it's 20$/month for 5 connections, but it's great for me because I live 60 miles from the shop. I do always have someone verify the first form wether film or proof before letting the jobs go, but other than that, remote is the way to go. I find the key is a big monitor, 20wide minimum, 24"wide is optimal, and I can have all computers connected at once and just click the various tabs for whatever task,, from imposition with preps, checking seps on the mac client. I think in the future a lot of us will work remote. The way I look at it is that I have that many more computers at my fingertips.

john

 

[rin]

Re: Working from home?

Chandirasegaran,
I'm not sure what you're replying to. There's no job opening here. It is a discussion on how to set up computers for remote access such as timbuktu.

 

[neotrog]

Re: Working from home?

Yes. I do think old school. Because I'm old. Our company is growing and in the black. There must be some merit to it.

I'm not saying PDF isn't capable, duh. What I'm saying is it's become as complex as postscript and the files are damn near as large so we didn't really gain anything. Except maybe making Adobe rich, which they deserve to be because so many of their products have no parallel. If you've been debugging output since 1987 you probably have that same feeling of deja` vu all over again that I get.

That odd post in the middle of this is just what I'm talking about. This kind of virtual labor force has a scary component. As if it isn't bad enough, the Hu (human element) is becoming even more of a commodity. Any low bidder ON THE PLANET that'll take a quick PayPal could proposition my boss by e-mail and replace me. There's millions of people globally that can do the technical side of what I do. I'm humble enough to realize that. It scares me, that's all I'm saying.

I have a few friends that work from home full time. They typically fall into two categories. The ones who have lost track of what "home" means. Their preoccupied with their job 24x7 and are unavailable to their spouses and children. Those are the employers' favorites. Then there's the ones who don't actually work. They generate barely enough activity to appear "present" but are barely giving 10%. Basically robbing their employers of a paycheck. These are friends that I like as human beings but I'm damn glad they don't work for my company. There's going to be the few and the lucky that can find a life-work balance of their own accord but it is a challenge.


Anyways, this has all drifted way off topic. Back to the point, remote control is a clump. Yes, it'll get something done but not as much as an on site person. As all of them seem to rely on the same underlying technology, just buy on price and lack of buggy behavior. You'd be better served to find innovations that let the users work on the local PC(Mac) as much as possible and just push data files when needed.

 

[TigerPress]

Re: Working from home?

{quote:title=prepressguru wrote:}You should be thinking of a VPN connection and not a screen sharing or Remote connection. {quote}


I disagree. I use Timbuktu for OSX and RDC for Windows and find them both to be very responsive. Because you are remoting your computer at work, large files are never transfered over the internet connection - only the screen image. The only problem I have is that the pointer icon does not always reflect the chosen tool. You get used to this after a while.

We have a 3Mbs connection at work and I have cable internet at home.

...Wayne