If you can do it, you should have a seperate work computer, one that you only do work on. Your other computer should be the one that you use for web-browsing, online shopping, video-watching, etc. etc. etc. Maybe your work PC is a desktop in your home office and your recreational PC is a laptop that you can use anywhere in your home, but it's important to segregate them if possible.

The most concrete way to section off your work time from your personal time? Just don’t use the same devices for both.

“There’s been some great research showing that people with two phones, one for work and one for personal, feel less distracted during the day and are better able to compartmentalize work,” Ms. Whillans said. “That becomes especially important in the work-from-home environment. You want to create physical separation between personal and work where it doesn’t easily mix.”

Don’t Work on Your Party Laptop or Party on Your Work Laptop

Your work computer is at the center of your home office. It's the capabilities of your internet-connected PC that allow you to perform useful work for your company from home. Let's look at it...what do you need? More precisely - if you could you would purchase the absolute best computer for home, but at some point reality kicks in. The question becomes, what can do the job affordably?

Let's dispose of the laptop versus desktop issue. Either one will work. In general, a desktop PC will be cheaper because it doesn't have to be small and portable. If you plan on moving your main computer a lot, or you have a business where you visit clients and would like to bring your computer, you're probably going to want a laptop. I'd still argue against a laptop even here, because your main home computer will have a ton of resources on it, and every time you bring your portable computer out of the house you risk it to damage or theft (you're perfectly backed-up though, right?). If you're setting up a home office the computer will, by definition be used in a home office, ie one place. I'd therefore argue that the most bang for the buck will come from a desktop computer. I am not a fan of "All-in-One" PC's where the computer is built into the screen and doesn't take up more space than the screen. Sure it's a space-saver, but if the screen dies your computer is toast. And if you want to upgrade the screen? Stick with a standard desktop. But which desktop computer?

What about the Apple versus Microsoft question? This particular series of articles is a discussion of Microsoft Windows computers, as that's what I'm most up-to-date about. Apple makes a fine computer but I think they are expensive out of proportion to the value they deliver. I used to use and support Apple computers, I built and ran a Hackintosh PC¹ for a long time. But over time I've gravitated to Windows 10 (and Linux) PC'smostly because of the price/value issue, but also because Apple computers feel more locked down to me and less amenable to tinkering, and I do love tinkering. I'm also not thrilled that Apple just announced that they will be moving their entire line of processors from those manufactured by Intel (called CISC processors, for "complex instruction set computer") to those manufactured by Apple (called RISC processors or "Reduced Instruction Set computer"). There are some advantages in doing so but the entire Apple line will be in flux for several years, and having lived through this years ago when they did the same thing, I'm not inclined to do so again.

I prefer to think about PC's regarding their capabilities rather than their brands. But if I had to choose a brand I think HP's are good. I've had good experiences with Dell computers (this web site is running on one). I'm not a fan of Lenovo as it's owned by China, and China is doing far too much obnoxious crap in the world (Hello Hong Kong!) for me to patronize them. Also they are suspected of having unauthorized spy hardware inside them such that many governments will not allow them to be used in government work. Other brands are OK though. Always check the ratings and user reviews if you're considering one specific make and model to see what others think. My main PC is homemade and I don't expect you to build your own. But if you want something fun to do that will result in a really nicely workable computer, look into it (maybe start with upgrading an old computer, a process that I wrote about here).

Let's break down computers into their components:

PROCESSORS, THE BRAIN OF YOUR PC

The processor (or Central Processing Unit - CPU) is the computer chip brain of the PC, containing up to billions of microscopic transistors within. The more transistors, roughly the more powerful the processor. Today's processors have several fully functional processors within called "cores", meaning that all modern processors are multi-core. Current high-end processors for desktop use can have up to 16 or more cores.

Also, today's PC's have a processor made by one of two companies - Intel or AMD. Both are good and I've routinely used both, though lately through inertia I find myself using Intel chips more (despite the flaws that make them more hack-able). Remember we're looking for something that provides good desktop performance for working at home, which is a bit different than requiring great gaming performance. I don't recommend that you combine the two in the same machine...too many compromises in a number of areas. Keep your work machine a work machine.

If you're using an Intel processor, you should look for minimally a Core i5, preferably an i7 (but you could get by nicely with a Core i3). The computer I'm typing on now (my main computer) has an i5-6500 running at 3.20 Ghz. It has 4 cores. i5 processors can have anywhere 2, 4 or 6 cores and they can be set to run from 2.7 to 4.1 GHz. i7 processors can be made with 2, 4 6 or 10 cores and run from 2.4 to 3.0 Ghz. Obviously I have tremendously simplified their complexity, and their performance is also determined by things like how much level2 cache they have, thermal design power, hyper-threading (in Intel CPU's) and so on and so on. But as a rough guide, stick to i5 and i7 processors in the Intel line and i3 if you're on a serious budget. I have running right next to me now a computer with a core i3-4160 chip running at 3.60 GHz with Windows 10 and it's absolutely fine for anything I need it to do.

As I am lately more familiar with Windows than Apple, I'm also lately more familiar with Intel than AMD processors. But there was a time when AMD CPU's were all I would buy because their price/performance was so much better than their Intel counterparts. In fact there were many years during which my main PC was powered by a 4-core AMD Phenom chip. So let me talk generalities in terms of AMD chips. The K8 and K10 core architecture chips (Athlon, Sempron, Opteron etc. made from 2003-2014) are pretty much obsolete but I have some K8/K10 computers and they are running Windows 10 just fne. Any Bulldozer AMD processor should be fine for a home computer, but if buying now look for their Zen-core architecture, chip named Ryzen. These are capable and at high-end some of the most capable processors around (with a cost that reflects as much).

MEMORY

Computer memory is work space basically. Work storage. The data that the computer is constantly manipulating has to be held somewhere and that somewhere is in the memory. the contents of the memory are erased when the computer shuts off. Memory is in a computer "chip" or metal-oxide semiconductor and generally looks like the illustration on the right. Memory chips come in different types and capacities. I urge you to get as much memory for your computer as you can afford, sixteen GB's or more if you can and your computer can support it. Eight to twelve if you can't get one with sixteen. Four to six GB's of memory is not enough for your main PC.For a more in-depth coverage of memory see my previous article here.

STORAGE

Storage is where your computer puts things long-term. Storage contents stay put when the power shuts off. If memory is the space it needs to keep data while it works with it, storage is where it keeps data long-term. When you save a file you're storing it. Computers store information in one of several ways. It used to be that they stored it magnetically on rotating disks, the entire assembly called a "hard disk drive." For many years this was the primary and only storage that a computer had. Now "Solid State Drives" (SSD's) are supplanting hard disk drives. Solid state drives have no moving parts; they use semiconductors (like memory chips) to store data and they do so faster than rotational hard disk drives (AND they keep it when the power is off!). Your main computer should have a solid state drive. Sometimes they look like laptop drives, sometimes they look like computer chips that plug directly into the computer motherboard (called M.2 drives or more recently NVMe drives, left). You want a main computer equipped with some form of solid state drive, not a rotational hard drive. SSD's are faster and more responsive.

Storage capacity is expressed in gigabytes or GB's. For me a computer with 128 GB's is the minimal for day-to-day work. 240 would be more comfortable. 500 is plenty and 1000 GB's or a full terabyte (TB) is probably too much. I have worked on a lot of people's computers over the years and those with 1 TB of storage or more were usually mostly empty. Unless you are working with a large amount of video (or an enormous amount of pictures) you'll never approach using up one TB of storage in day-to-day use. It's inexpensive enough such that many computers today come with a TB of storage or more. Just be sure that it's SSD storage.

VIDEO

A computer's video refers to the part that drives the computer screen output. Obviously you want capable video. There are two choices: most computer motherboards come with "integrated" video. That is, the video circuitry is built into the computer's motherboard or main circuit board. The other type of video is provided by a separate circuit board or "card" that plugs into a standard slot on the motherboard. It has its own video processor chip and its own memory, and generally provides better video output than integrated video does. For day-to-day use, integrated video is just fine. It's improved tremendously over time and will do anything that you need your work machine to do (as long as you're not gaming). That's one of the reasons that you want to get as much memory as possible, because if you use integrated video it will use some of your computer's memory as video memory which then won't be available for anything else.

OTHER STUFF

A few other things about your main computer: It's nice to have USB ports on the front of it for easy access. Do you need an optical drive? Not really but again it's nice to have, if only to use for archival backing up of data and reading old data. You should have some decent speakers for videoconferencing (and listening to music!). Since I use a TV as a monitor I use the TV speakers which are decent but not great. You can get a pair of computer speakers pretty much anywhere, Amazon, Best Buy etc. Look over what's out there and get something in your price range. Remember you're not looking for audiophile-capable speakers (unless you play music and can appreciate it at that level) but ones that allow you to hear conversation clearly and audibly. You can substitute headphones for speakers; noise-cancelling ones are a real boon if your home environment is noisy.

You'll need a video camera for videoconferencing, and these can be fairly inexpensive. I'm using a Logitech HD webcam C615 and it does fine. It also has a built-in microphone which I prefer. If you buy a  camera without one, you'll have to buy a separate mike and then have two cords dangling around. My Logitech costs around $60 and is one of three webcams recommended by wirecutter.com. If you prefer something a bit more inexpensive and if you were intrigued by my recommendation of using an old cell phone for your business phone, you might consider using an older cell phone as your web camera. As an experiment I tried setting up my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 as a webcam. The method of choice is by using a software called Droidcam. There's an Android version available via the play store and a Windows client. Basically you start the phone app first, it tells you its IP address and you enter that into the Windows client. So far so good but every time I tried it they would connect but the picture froze, and nothing I would do could unfreeze it.  So I tried IP camera adapter 4.0...same deal. There's a Windows client and a phone app. You access the phone app via a QR code on the Windows client web site. This one worked and I was able to use the video from the phone in a Zoom connection.

If you have one of those inexpensive Wyze HD streaming cameras around (left), you can also re-purpose it to be a webcam. This involved flashing different firmware from Wyze on it and can be a bit tricky, so don't do this unless you're fairly technically adept. I found it to be a good webcam but the built-in microphone wasn't so good. If you use this as your camera you might want a separate microphone.

The mouse and keyboard and especially the screen itself are central to your experience in using your computer, and there are a lot of considerations involved, especially with the screen. Rather than go over everything again, I refer you to a discussion of this topic that I wrote up in my previous series about refurbishing an old computer. It's perfectly relevant here.

CONTINUE ON TO PART 3 - PRINTERS/SCANNERS

¹Hackintosh - unauthorized clone of a Macintosh made from PC parts