Re: Working from home?
Go to work. It's good for the soul. When your home, be home. We go home from work so we can stop working.
This is a double edged sword. Once The Man realizes you don't have to be on location to do prepress, it'll be a short leap to having it done in Bangladesh by people who make $10/day or clearing houses that can do the work for next to nothing because of economies of scale. It's being done. The more the "workflow" does all the thinking the less valuable all us finicky, family supporting, health insurance needing, expensive brainiaks become. There's not many people who can effectively do all the tasks required to take a computer graphic from pretty picture to separated tools quickly and without error. There's lots of people that can drop a PDF on a workflow. Don't get me started on PDF!!! PDFwas supposed to be "portable". Simple, small. I'll stick with what I said back in '99. In order for PDF to become capable of handling all the complexities of modern color separated image rendering, it will have become PostScript.
Technologically speaking you've got to think about what you're doing with ARD and all these other remote control gadgets. Your taking a whole bunch of processes that are normally handled on the incredibly fast system bus, packing them up in packets with a lot of overhead, sending on a broadband wire and then dishing them back out. Even a LAN is slow compared to what goes on in the box. Sure, these tools are great for the emergencies and on occasion, but it's no way to work long term. Hell, you're running two computers to do a task that one should do. From the point of the employers it's no big deal if they don't have to pay for the home machine or the broadband, and, if you're salary, why not have you work 40 in the office and another 40 at home!! Software licensing can be managed for the box apps., for now, but I suspect if dual installation becomes more of a business practice they'll put the brakes on it.
To answer the question directly.... We do have people work from home but have found it to be far more reliable and efficient to have them truly work locally and send the final output file either directly to a TCP/IP "printer" routed through the firewall, or dump the AI or PDF in a folder for final output after soft proof. With a T1 at the company and Fios at home it's bearable. None of these methods are preferable to having a body on site but they have helped smooth out situations like Maternity Leave and such.