HWM – Singapore – Tech Awards 2020 Readers Choice – May 2020

Continued Circuit Breaker

4 months, 3 issues. That’s how long I’ve been without a haircut.

In my last note, I made a mention about the realities of working from home, and after spending a good quarter of 2020 sequestered in my room, I’m missing the office. Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say. While we’re continuing to service HWM with stories about cybersecurity, hygiene and optimising your work-fromhome setups – and it has been entirely possible to upkeep HardwareZone.com remotely – there are physical aspects that I miss.

Having ready access to our testing lab, equipment, tools, and human interaction just makes tasks so much easier to accomplish. For example, with everything done through e-mail, chats and video conferencing, a simple request that would have taken me 5 minutes to walk over to a colleagues desk, show what I need, and get immediate feedback, now takes up to an hour of either waiting for replies, repeated back and forth of minor misunderstandings, or just set up time due to glitches in the VPN or hosting or whatever. Plus, you just can’t ‘read the room’ in a videoconference, if you know what I mean.

Now I’ve always been an advocate of technology. So, while I will admit that the way the world conducts business WILL permanently change post covid-19, there are some things that cannot be 100% replaced virtually.

Zachary Chan
Editor