WE'RE pretty much in the second week of enhanced community quarantine and for a lot of us, we’re now working from home. And with that number of people now working from home, there’s a chance that a lot of you are having tech problems at home.
Here are a couple of the most common ones and how to work around it.
Lousy home wi-fi connection
There are no reports yet of any problems with the country’s internet backbone so it’s pretty safe to assume that everything’s peachy from your ISP’s side. That slowdown you’re experiencing is most likely because your home network is being overloaded. I’d suspect that the wi-fi router you’re still using is that same router your ISP provided for you.
Well, since you might not be able to order a brand new wi-fi router to handle all the devices in your home right now, the best way to go about this is to talk to your household members and establish a schedule of going online. At least, ask them to stay off the wi-fi network during the times you’re working.
If you are able to get a new wi-fi router, get that chance now. Yes, it’s going to be a bit expensive but it’s the best way to go. Think of it as you future-proofing your home network in terms of reliability, speed and capacity.
Slow and laggy work computer
If you have a company-provided laptop, it’s most likely an old one and is even due for an upgrade 5 years ago. But that’s something that will have to wait for when we’re all back in the office. If you can, maybe you can move your work to another computer at home. Make sure that your home computer though is faster than what your company provided you. It’s just bonkers if your own home computer is worse than your work computer. Make sure you have a clean USB drive handy because you’ll most likely use that to move the files between the two computers.
Make sure though that, on your home computer, you have one folder where you temporarily put in your work files. And once you’re done working on those, move it back to your work computer and do not, I say again, do not leave any trace of those files in your home computer.
If there are other things you encounter while you work-from-home, always remember to not panic. Take a step back, take a deep breath, come back to your computer and Google your way to a solution.
Stay home, stay safe!