I've been working from home for a dozen years and I love it. The past six years have been spent working at night (I'm a night-owl, anyway). I love it. The faux socialization (and interruptions, conflicts, inanity, politics, etc) are too often highly overrated. I'll take my solitude, any day. It may mean that I seldom see the sun and go out in public even less frequently than that, but I'll take that over the regular rat race, any day. Plus, all the people I would work with in my division are spread across the planet, anyway. Even if I worked at the office, I would be twelve hundred miles away from the closest colleague who does what I do.

I find that the reward of more free time (no commute, work when I'm most productive, no hassle about presentation, no noise or inanity, etc) outweighs absolutely everything else. I have turned down far more lucrative offers within and outside of the same company over the years, simply because the benefit of working from home is so extraordinarily appealing to me. A few years ago, I turned down a position that would have involved a 50% increase in salary, because it would have meant going to an office 8-5 five days a week. (And when you figure in commute and getting ready in the morning, it's more like 6am-6pm).

I have occasionally thought that the whole public space thing - were I could be alone, but not - may be appealing. I have always turned it down, however, because all of the people I know have negative connotations to guys in coffee shops or cafes with their laptops and cell phones. They associate a guy at the coffee shop doing work with the guy who stands in public with a cell phone (that probably isn't even on) yelling "buy! sell! buy!" to make himself look important. I'd probably then spend all my time being self-conscious about whether everyone around me is just looking at me like I'm some pretentious asshole, even though I'm just a guy wanting to have some tenuous connection with the rest of the human race while I do my daily thing.