Do you have dual monitors at home?

At Home Rental Services, we’ve always invested in systems and processes that allow our team to be more efficient. Inevitably, these investments end up improving internal and external communications. When our team started working from home earlier this year, we were trying to figure out how to operate remotely.

Luckily, many of the tools that we use to run the business are in the cloud. We don’t have to be in the office to access those systems. And we’re able to set up remote connections to the server in our office when we need certain files.

Being productive is more than having access.

We realized we had an issue worth addressing… and it all started with a simple request. Caitlin wanted to know how to split the HDMI connection coming out of her laptop so that she could have 2 monitors in her home office. (It’s not easy to do unless you buy expensive hardware.)

We work with a lot of data, and many years ago we equipped all of our office workstations with dual monitor setups. But now we’re primarily working from home. And we realized that we needed to upgrade the systems people were using at home so they could have dual monitors there as well.

We wanted something that was fairly compact, had decent technical specs and could handle at least 2 monitors. After a little bit of research, we found an incredible solution… the HP EliteDesk 705 G4 Mini Desktop Computer. It’s got a great list of specs including a 3.2 GHz AMD Ryzen 5 Pro processor, 8 GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD hard drive, six USB 3.1 ports and more. Most importantly, it supports up to THREE monitors with three DisplayPort 1.2 outputs.

B&H Photo Video

We ended up buying these from B&H Photo because they were on sale, there is no sales tax (their store is in New Jersey), and free shipping! Normally, this computer retails for around $800. As we’re writing this story, they’re on sale for $419. We also spent another $30 for an additional stick of RAM to increase the total memory to 16GB. Monitors aren’t expensive. You can get decent 24 inch monitors for less than $150. So a brand new home setup was less than $1,000 and they arrived with two large monitors!

Our team was ecstatic with the new equipment… the typical comment was that they’d forgotten how much more efficient they are with dual monitors.

It might be a good time to take a look at the equipment your employees are using at home. A little investment can go a long way towards productivity!