Essential Digital Skills Level 1

111 videos, 7 hours and 55 minutes

Course Content

Computers and working remotely

Video 13 of 111
3 min 4 sec
English
English
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If you are going to be working from home or remote working, then you need to decide what type of computer you are using. Now, it may well be you have got a normal office-based computer, it might be a bigger work supplied one or you have got one at home already, and that can be a normal box type of computer, you can have a single screen or twin screens, but also there are different types of laptops you could be working on depending on how much work you are doing.

If you are working at home a lot then having a proper computer is probably better because it usually has more memory, more features and you can expand it better to make your life easier. But if not, there are also laptops. So here we have got a Windows laptop and also the MacBook, both of which work really well. The advantage I found with the MacBook is you can use things like an iPad as a second display on it, which makes it a lot easier to work with. You can have set two screens very easily, and they just link wirelessly between each one of them. But the key thing when you are using laptops is to think about how you are positioning yourself if you are using them for a length of time. Now if you are just in a hotel or just using it for a short time, then just use it as a normal laptop but consider using a secondary keyboard, it will spread the keyboard out and make it a lot more comfortable to actually use.

These are our computers, but you could also if you are just doing short-term stuff or you are remote working or working from a car, move on to tablet-type devices. For example, if I am seeing a client, I will not always take my computer in with me, if I want to show them something, then I will take the iPad because it makes it a lot easier to work with. And you can use the keyboard on the screen, or you can use a second keyboard. If you have got a smaller iPad, it works exactly the same way. Where people come into our office, we link these through as well, and if I wanted to see something I can do exactly the same in the sense that I can be looking at the computer and then the customer can also be looking at the second screen, but you can still, if you are remote working in somebody's office, easily put that on to an external screen if you wanted to.

Your mobile phone is effective, it does a lot of what these will would do, and you can send emails, you can look at the internet, you can write Word documents, things like that, but again, this is a very hard thing to use for any length of time because of the sheer size of it. But even with a mobile phone, you can get an external keypad which will allow you to type and do some work, but if you are working from home, you do need to think a lot about how you are going to be using a computer, what you want that computer to do. It may well be it is decided for you because this is one your employer provides you with, but definitely think about the area you are working, and what would be best if you have got a desk here in your home, then a wide computer is ideal.