This article is meant for consultants whose fiscal year end is December 31 and who are looking to spend a few dollars on some new gear for the business in order to chalk up tax deductions. It’s worth thinking about your tax situation at this time of year. A well-spent $800-$1,000 on supplies/equipment for your sole proprietorship at this time of year can put you in a lower tax bracket. I’ve compiled a list of five technologies that you could consider picking up for your consulting business in the next few days:

1. External Battery for Laptop

I’ve written about this gadget in the past [READ]. Most laptops only run for 2-3 hours on a full charge – and only for the first year or so. Battery life deteriorates rapidly as the computer ages. Battery Geek Inc. makes a range of external batteries compatible with just about every laptop on the market. I bought their highest end model earlier this year for about $400 and haven’t regretted it. With my internal battery fully charged and the 200 Wh Portable Power Station, I can work a full 8 hours with WiFi running and no outlet in sight. I’d get more battery life if I had a more modest laptop but my current laptop is a full desktop replacement.

This is an easily justifiable expense. $400 for a battery seems like a lot of money until you’re trying to work out of a coffee shop out of town and there isn’t an outlet in sight. Mine paid for itself the first time I had to rack up a full day of billable hours off the grid.

2. Windows Home Server

You may have heard about these devices before – they’re basically servers for the home (as the name implies). The operating system is based on Windows Server 2003 SP2 (a good, stable operating system, by all accounts). If you’re not familiar with Servers – they’re a low-end PC tower without a monitor, mouse or keyboard that you hook up to the network and cram full of hard drives.

The most common WHS you’ll find on the market is HP’s MediaSmart Server. It comes in in 500 GB and 1 TB flavours with the option to add up to seven more hard drives as you go. The 500 GB version runs for about $550 and does all of the following:

- Centralized, Automatic Backup of up to 10 PCs on the network
- Health Monitoring of all the PCs on the network
- File Sharing across all of the computers
- Print Server
- Shadow Copies (so you can recover older versions of files)
- Remote Access Gateway so you can access your files from the Internet or any other computer on the network
- Media Streaming so if you have an XBOX 360 hooked up to your home theatre, you can use it to stream your MP3 collection to your stereo or view your photo collection on your TV.
- Data redundancy if you have more than one harddrive in the box.

I’ve used external hard drives and manually backed up my files periodically. Yes, this is the cheaper option but a lot more prone to human error/ hard drive failures (in my opinion). I’m going out to pick up one of these HP MediaSmart boxes tomorrow. I’ll write a full review of it in January.

3. Presentation Remote

If you have to make presentations on the road, I always think it’s much more professional to have a presentation remote so that you don’t have to stay anchored to the PC hosting the deck. Part of good speaking skills is actively engaging the audience. That’s hard to do when you have to keep running back and forth to your laptop to hit the space bar.

There are lots of presentation remotes on the market and I’ve used four or five over the years. I don’t own one myself but I plan on picking one up in the new year (along with an LCD projector). Remotes can be had for as little as $50 but for a full-featured unit (some of which double as wireless optical mice), you’re looking at more like $100. I don’t have any particular models to recommend but they’re readily avaiable at any store that sells laptops and accessories. Many of them also come with laser pointers.

4. LCD Projector

This might seem like overkill for a small business but they’re relatively inexpensive and can make you seem much more professional. It’s also an added service you can offer to your clients. I often moderate meetings for my clients and usually ask them to provide an LCD projector. Most of the units my clients have are old, beat up and there’s always a hiccup when I try to link it to my laptop.

If you have your own projector, you can do a sales presentation anywhere there’s a white wall. You can also use it to show movies on a 300″ screen to your friends and family. I’ve used many projectors in the past. Epsons, in my opinion, are garbage. I’ve had a lot of luck with Sony projectors. The last one I bought was a Sony VPLCX100 [LINK]. It was bright, quiet and very portable. It’s not the cheapest projector on the market but it’s the cheapest one Sony makes. The VPLEW5 [LINK] also looks good – especially if you’re planning on using HDMI and HD content as an input. Both units run for just under $1,400.

5. A Netbook

While I completely panned these sub-notebooks in an earlier article [READ], I will say that if your current laptop is a desktop replacement monstrosity like my current laptop, a netbook is a nice addition to your mobile arsenal. I think you need to be in a unique situation to justify one of these units. For example, I use my notebook PC as a desktop replacement at a clients’ office when I go in to work at their office. I have a desk there and go in as often as three times a week. I needed something that I could take home with me at the end of the day but with enough horsepower and a big enough screen to get me through 8 hours of work.

When I wish I had a netbook is when I’m on the road and just want to crack off a blog post or get caught up on my e-mail at a coffee shop. Arguably, I can do that kind of thing with my BlackBerry Bold but while the screen on the the Bold is lovely, the keyboard isn’t meant for long bouts of typing and you start to get eyestrain after an hour. Trust me, I’ve done it.

The most popular makes on the market are the Asus EeePC [LINK] and the Acer Aspire One [LINK]. Many manufacturers have gotten into the Netbook game lately including offerings from Dell, HP, Toshiba and range in price from $350 – $500. Don’t expect these things to replace all of the functionality of a normal laptop and as in my earlier review, I suspect anyone who thinks this is a realistic replacement for a normal laptop is using less than 25% of their laptop’s capabilities and isn’t a real business user.

The bottom line is these computers are cheap, fit in a purse or briefcase and can get you online, checking your e-mail or editing a document in no time from anywhere. They’re not a bad idea if you spend a lot of time on the road. I know that several times in the past few months, I’ve cursed my gigantic laptop as I struggled to fit it and my paperwork on a small coffee shop table.