[JohnFen]

> You also lose the ease of just walking over to someone to ask a question.

That's a benefit to working from home. One of the worst things about office work is that it makes it easy for someone to come and interrupt your train of thought. It takes time to enter the flow, and almost no time to be shoved out of it, at which point you have to take time to get back into the flow.

A quick question can cost a half hour or so that way.

This is where IM or email shine. You can ignore it until you're in a place where answering it won't be so costly.