National Work from Home Day: A blessing or a curse?

In honour of National Work from Home Day, the silicon.com team stayed out of the office to find out just how easy it is to do your job remotely. Overall, everyone was glad not to have to commute in to work. But there is a price to pay and many found that the technology isn't quite there yet in some form or another. Below, the silicon.com editorial team give their point of view on how the great working from home experiment turned out for them...

Julian Goldsmith

It's been a frustrating day really. Usually I'm able to get on to the webmail service on my home laptop but not today. This means I'm reduced to IM, web browsing and my phone as business resources. The plus side is I'm close to the toaster.

I finally give up on my home computer mid morning after seeing if my work laptop will connect wirelessly to my ADSL router. It says it has, but I still can't get on IM or the web, so it probably hasn't.

Eventually, I give up and plug in the Ethernet cable and I'm up and running immediately, I think. I do have web access and IM but my email inbox won't update and I can't send mail. At least I do have contacts and past email addresses from my archive.

Towards the end of the day, a colleague gives me the URL for the webmail and I'm finally able to get to my inbox.

Working from home is very relaxing, but when things go wrong it takes a long time to fix on your own. We have had a couple of IM conferences but communication within the team is very disjointed. I'm left with a strong feeling of detachment. It's also very quiet. I don't have the TV or radio on, because I know it will disturb me.

Still, it is a real boost not to have to commute and many of my problems are start up problems, once I've discovered how to connect to the VPN, work should be a lot smoother.

Nick Heath

Working from home was certainly a mixed blessing.

After the initial joy of forgoing the usual two-hour train journey into London and sneaking an extra 10 minutes in bed, my computer nightmare began.

Despite two hassle-free experiences of home working my attempt to log into silicon.com's network today was greeted by an error message.

Several calls to the IT desk later I had limited access to my emails and by 9.30am I was communicating with my workmates via IM.

Working from home is great in theory but it depends on everything running smoothly, and where technology is concerned that is far from a given.

Everything seemed to take twice as long and by the end of the day it was almost enough to make me miss standing cheek-to-jowl with the other sour-faced commuters - almost.

Tim Ferguson

I enjoyed the extra 45 minutes in bed before making the long journey to the lounge to log on. I found the 3G card easy to set up and get online and was on the network by 9am. The 3G card became a bit slow in the afternoon so I switched to my home wi-fi network to send a large file.

In terms of filing stories and communicating with the rest of the team, we use IM and email a lot anyway so it wasn't a huge problem to rely on it more than normal. We had the news meeting over the phone between news editor and individual reporters - which was fine.

If it had been better weather I would have taken my laptop outside to the garden to do some work which is a luxury you don't have when in an office in central London.

Although I was grateful to avoid the 45 minute commute on the crowded Tube, I did find it a bit strange not to talk to colleagues face to face for the whole day. If I could teleport to the office every day, that would great but I think having a break from the commute occasionally is a nice thing to have.

Toby Wolpe

As the journalist on the silicon.com team who probably spends the most time working remotely, I've hardly covered myself in glory on the UK's National Work at Home Day.

The problems haven't been with the technology - the wireless broadband link to my desktop and laptop is working fine. All the apps, from email to content management, work just as smoothly as when I'm in the office.

The piece I was editing first thing about the dos and don'ts of job interviews went over without a hitch from my home near the Sussex coast to our sub editor.

The issues have really just arisen because I seem to have been slightly out of step with my colleagues all day.

For example, I know silicon.com's virtual news meeting must have happened because I saw the email listing the stories the others are working on.

Later I joined an IM meeting just as everyone had left. Then, I tried unsuccessfully to phone a few people in the office only to discover they were all out.

So, as seems always the case with home working, the things that go awry are usually to do with dealing with people, rather than with technology.

The morning's only successful interaction - apart from a few snatches of IM - were at home with my terrier Muzz, part dog, part paper shredder.

Bethan Jones

As sub editor at silicon.com I usually work from home for an hour or so every morning in order to update the site with stories occurring overnight, therefore I wasn't expecting to encounter too many problems with connecting remotely. So, as usual I was happily working away and rather pleased by the fact I wasn't faced with the commute into the office - especially as the weather had turned and rain was most certainly on the way.

Unfortunately, as the clock chimed 9am - just about the time I would usually be logging off and making my way into the office - the roar of machinery fired up as the builders directly outside my window started their working day.

This was not a good sign.

So the first problem I encountered was not a technological one but an environmental one. And to be honest, after just 10 minutes of the monotonous thud of a hammer being swung against a pile of bricks, I was almost missing the freezing-cold realms of the air-conditioned silicon.com offices.

Fast-forward one hour and the sound of a workman whistling the Match of the Day theme tune on repeat became too much. I had to find a new place to work.

Natasha Lomas

I'm on a press trip to BlackBerry-maker RIM's Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando, Florida - which is taking place in the biggest Marriott Hotel in the world.

The hotel charges for in-room internet access but there's free wireless in the conference area and press room so it's not all bad.

Signal strength is excellent - and I'm apparently getting 11Mbps so no complaints on speed either (that said, the whole 5,000-strong wireless conference mob might have rioted if there hadn't been free and free-flowing wi-fi).

The press room is windowless and the wallpaper does nothing to help my jetlag headache but I find a spare power plug to keep my laptop juiced so dingy environs are forgiven. Desk space is limited but there's always the floor. I've worked in worse places.