Millions of people around the world have seized the opportunity to start their own business.
Whether selling products or their own skills, the chance to shape their futures with their own hands is providing an irresistible prospect.
But with this opportunity comes new responsibilities: for accounting, correspondence, publicity, dealing with suppliers, your bank manager and taxes, and perhaps most importantly finding and retaining your next client.
In fact, most of your time could easily be taken up with everything but realizing your original business idea.
Your personal computer can reduce the time spent on many of these tasks.
It can even help you research your business ideal before you invest heavily in it.
For correspondence and publicity you could design a logo using Paint or another drawing program.
It's often easiest to design your stationery and produce correspondence from a template, and keep all your files either on your computer's hard disk and backed up on portable disks.
You can use your PC's database program to create a client database and, from that, customer name and address labels.
Make sure you never miss an appointment by running your business diary from your Desktop.
If you use a car for work, you can work out your running costs to claim them as a business expense.
Your spreadsheet program will make dealing with your accounts less of a headache.
With your PC, you can design your own business cards, or you can advertise with your web site.
You can also use the internet to correspond by email, compare competitors prices and services.
Before long, your computer will establish itself as your most productive and versatile employee, leaving you more time to make your home business work.