Welcome to guest blogger, Ari Morse.  Ari is a licensed private investigator (www.bestpi.com) and forensic genealogist (www.findanheir.com), based in Central Florida.  He is the fourth generation in a family business that specializes in locating missing heirs to estates and conduct international genealogical research. He is often hired to handle complex genealogical matters, prepare comprehensive Affidavits and testify in Court.   He is a Past President of the Florida Association of Private Investigators, former board member of the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida, and serves as a board member of several civic and professional organizations. His email is: ari@findanheir.com,

Review: Lenovo Thinkpad Twist

As a private investigator and forensic genealogist, my electronic tools are an important to my getting the job done as efficiently as possible as we rely heavily on email, imaging of vital records, large documents and spreadsheets.  We were in the market to replace some three year old netbooks with some ultrabooks, and while reading the ABA’s Solosez listserve there was a post by Ross Kodner about his interest in the Lenovo Thinkpad Twist.  We value what Ross has to say, especially about technology and spent over twenty hours researching, going to stores to actually test drive the machine.  We also compared the Twist with the Lenovo Yoga, several Sony Ultrabooks, the Lenovo X1 Carbon, and the Dell XPS 12.  Our research proved one thing, that for the price, and flexibility of options, Ross was right, the Twist could not be beat.

We were initially going to order the Twist from Lenovo directly through their shareholder program, however, their shipping time was several weeks out, so we opted to reach out to Carrie Waller at MacMall, who had the computer we were looking for, in stock, and ready to be shipped that day.

We ordered the Twist with an i7 processor, 500 gigabyte standard hard drive (7200rpm) together with a 24 gig micro solid state drive, and 8 gigs of ram.  We chose the regular hard drive over both solid state drive options because of the extra space, as we often open large files that contain thousands of images of vital records, and family history items.

Once the computer arrived at our office, we charged them for about one hour before we began setting them up.  The only things in the box were the computer and the charger.  Even though we had tested out the Twist at several big box office stores, we were surprised at how light it was, and even more at how well the weight was distributed.  The weight was distributed fairly evenly and there were no areas that felt heavier than others, which is nice when using the computer.  The appearance was nice, as it the computer is a matte black, with a texture of a very soft and smooth plastic or rubber.  The outside edge of the screen has a metallic finish which is only visible when the screen is closed or in tablet mode, and does not interfere with any images on the screen.

When we first booted up the laptop, it took about sixteen seconds from pressing the power button to the screen where you must enter your windows password, and it seems to vary between fourteen and eighteen seconds usually.  Having come from a Windows XP machine where this takes no less than sixty to ninety seconds, we were in awe.   The many reviews that we read complained that the screen was not a HD 1080p resolution, however, the screen is vibrant and has crisp images, handling everything without any pixilation or problems.  Given that we review many older documents and images, there are always quality issues, but this screen was very clear and allowed us to figure out the writing in a pre-1900 census record that we were previously unable to discern.

Using the Twist in the usual laptop setup where the keyboard is perpendicular to the screen is simply great.  The keyboard has keys that are curved slightly so that if you are someone who types rather quickly, it helps your fingers from slipping to the next key, which happened all the time on my older computer.  The keyboard also has the red trackpoint that is nice and comfortable.  The touchpad is a good size and very responsive to touch, although there are no buttons on the bottom, instead, Lenovo placed them above for use with the trackpoint.  There are only two negatives that I have discovered with the keyboard, the first being that it is not backlit, which would have been a nice feature, and the second is more of a personal preference in that the bottom left corner does not have the control key (the bottom left corner has the Fn key, and the CTRL is the second key in).

There are plenty of ports for peripherals, including two USB 3.0 (one on each side), a mini HDMI (left), headphone jack (left), ethernet (left), 4 in 1 card reader (left), and a mini display port (right).  This was definitely an advantage the Twist had on several of the other computers.

One nice aspect of using the Twist in different directions is that it will automatically change the view so that your screen is always facing the right way.  Given that the computer relies on one hinge, it feels strong and sturdy when lifting the screen or twisting.  There is a screen lock button just above the power button, if you would rather lock the screen so the computer could be passed or moved without fear of the display changing.

Most of our time so far has been using the Twist in the usual laptop setup, but it was also nice when using it as a tablet.  One thing we found interesting is how much heavier the Twist feels when using it as a tablet, and it could be because we are comparing it to the iPad, although the screen is significantly larger than the iPad.

This computer will definitely not replace my iPad in form or function but I do like that I can use the tablet feature while editing and reviewing a Microsoft Word Document, or while scrolling through a spreadsheet, or marking up a pdf.  I was also able to enlarge a document to show a client an image while the twist was in tablet mode, which was very neat.  So far as I have been able to tell, Lenovo does not make a stylus or recommend one for this laptop.

Setting the computer with the screen inverted, into tent mode is nice because the keyboard is hidden, not exposed like the Yoga.  This is perfect for watching movies, or simply showing a presentation to a small group.  While this may not be something I would envision using often, it is a nice option to be able to utilize when the need arises.

So far the battery has lasted between four and five hours of pretty heavy office related use.  Turning the monitor to the side slightly is nice, especially to avoid any potential glare or bad angles with lighting.

The Twist would never replace the ease of use or the simplicity of an iPad, nor is it meant to do so.  It is a powerful, robust computer with lots of bells and whistles, for a very reasonable price.  Now that Windows 8 has become the norm, a touch screen is becoming more necessary, and in that case, there is nothing I would rather have in my bag than the Twist, as it gives me the best of all worlds for form, productivity, and pleasure, in a compact and lightweight design.

I’m constantly asked by clients, colleagues, friends, Romans, countrymen (countrypeople?), “what do you have in your laptop bag?” Or “can you tell me what’s in your mobile office bag?”

So here’ goes – a deconstruction, item-by-item, of what’s in my mobile bag.

Mobile office equipment has many personal elements so there are many “right” approaches. My cred is that I’m about to hit 1,000,000 Delta flight miles (which might not sound like a big deal for overseas regulars, but this is made up almost exclusively of MANY short-haul segments over the years). In other words, I travel ALOT. My mobile kit evolves constantly (in part because of my obsessive infatuation with mobile gear and the search for the “perfect” complement of mobility tools/gizmos/gadgets/accoutrements, etc.).

From the “knows enough to be genuinely dangerous” category of DIY PC tuneups came a post on a Bar listserve I frequent. The poster observed that he/she had just disabled all the “Services” from their Windows system (via editing MSCONFIG or going into Computer Administration via the Control Panel) to improve it’s overall startup time and speed.

My reaction? W – H – O – A     N – E – L – L – Y ! ! !

Disabling all services is NOT a good idea unless you know with absolute certainty what you are disabling. Often programs like anti-malware products and firewalls use several services from different sources, making it much less than obvious what is safe or desirable to disable v. those that will have a crippling effect.

While I have an iPad 3 with the truly lovely retina display, I actually prefer my 50% less expensive Google Nexus 7 tablet. The smaller form factor feels more paperback-like which suits my Kindle-reading needs well.

But I also do a lot of emailing and note-taking with the Nexus 7 and just really dislike onscreen keyboards in general. While I don’t suffer from “FFS” (Fat Finger Syndrome), I’m still not especially accurate and detest having to later explain why the Android keyboard I use and its propensity for hilarious substitutions is the cause of me referring to my friend Greta Sachse as “Great and sexy.”

So I decided to explore purpose-built Nexus 7 keyboard cases. After scouring online reviews and product sites, I decided  to try two well-reviewed products: the KHOMO leather swivel keyboard case and the Sharkk case which looks like a mini Zagg ProFolio+. Both were inexpensive – the former at $32 and the latter at only $19. Two cases for less than half of what I paid for my iPad’s superb  Zagg ProFolio+ keyboard case, so from a raw cost perspective, this was a good sign.

But is a keyboard case for a 7″ tablet better than the onscreen keyboard or are they simply too small to be useful. Well, having bought Asus’ very first commercial EEE PC Linux netbook with a 5.6″ screen in a 7″ netbook form factor many moons ago, I wasn’t exactly a stranger to lilliputian-sized keyboards.

Here’s a quick view (because, how long of a review do such tiny keyboards deserve?):

* KHOMO Swivel PU Case for Nexus 7 – as the link above shows, this is a classic, tri-fold portfolio case (mine is black leather but brown leather is available also. The tablets slips inside a corner-holding sheath which has a swivel mount on the back to allow portrait or landscape viewing. The keyboard is actually leather encased and attaches magnetically to the rest of the case – slick. This means you can remove it and hold it or put it on your typing surface or even use it with other systems since it is a Bluetooth device. The keys are small as you’d expect, but have a surprising amount of travel, solid feel and reasonable spacing. This meant that typing was more accurate more quickly than I would’ve expected from such a “Fantastic Voyage-ish” device. The leather encasing the keyboard is pebble-grained and has a very nice “hand.” Bluetooth pairing was virtually immediate. I would say that my typing accuracy was about 80% within two minutes – very good for me personally on such a small keyboard and LOTS better than onscreen typing. The keyboard does have an all-important Tab key and also a magnetic enclosure that activates the Nexus 7′s sleep function when closed and wake-up when opened. While the folded case does make the otherwise svelte Nexus 7 nearly 2.5 times thicker than when it goes au naturel, it’s not too large and is very visually attractive. 4.5 out of 5 possible stars on this with the only detraction from a perfect 5 attributable to the thickness of the package. The keyboard charges quickly with the same Micro USB connector that most devices (except iPads/iPhones) seem to use these days (including the Nexus 7 itself). I paid $32.99 at Amazon with free Prime shipping. Adds about 8 ounces to the weight of the Nexus 7.

* Sharkk Keyboard Case for Nexus 7 – a very different approach with an aluminum half-case with a backing that feels like the back of the Nexus 7 with the same rubberized surface. The Nexus 7 clips to the keyboard case barely adding about a quarter inch to the thickness of the tablet, while providing a protective cover. Attaching the case puts the Nexus 7 to sleep and wakes it when the case is removed. Weight is about 5 ounces. The Nexus 7 stands up in landscape mode only in a slot in the aluminum device’s chassis. Portrait mode doesn’t work – it causes the tablet to slip over backwards. Pairing of the Bluetooth device was flawless with entry of a keyboard-specific PIN required. The keyboard fully charged via its Micro USB connector in an hour and seemed to run for almost three days in sporadic use. Key feel is not nearly as good as the KHOMO with the keys being much closer together, although overall feel of the actual physical keys was good. Some spacing between smaller keys would be preferable, from a design perspective. As with the KHOMO a Tab key is included (unlike most other Android keyboards which don’t have them – a huge pain and something to look for specifically). My typing accuracy has been about 25% lower than with the KHOMO keyboard – I’m having trouble with the tight spacing of the keys and mis-hitting happens alot. Overall, the fit and feel are first rate and it’s a more compact package than the KHOMO offers, lighter, and less expensive. I paid $19 from Amazon with free Prime shipping. 4 out of 5 stars with points for fit and finish, and lost points because of the tight spacing of the keys and the detrimental effect that has on accuracy.

————-

On the other hand, instead of choosing, since you can get both keyboards for about half a C-Note, it might be worth ordering both and trying ‘em both out! But I especially like the removable leather-enrobed keyboard from the KHOMO – I tried it with my Macbook Air and other than the lack of Mac control/cmd/fn keys, it worked flawlessly.

Lately, the MicroLaw team has been very busy helping law practices of all shapes and sizes with projects like:

• Helping many firms achieve their own iteration of our Paper LESS Office process
• Helping select and deploy the Worldox document/email management system
• Helping select and deploy practice and financial management systems including Tabs 3 and Tabs PracticeMaster, among others
• Providing better usage-focused legal-specific training on Microsoft Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint
• Training on Adobe Acrobat and PDFing in their practices as part of our “PDF First” approach
• Helping firms with security and protection of confidential client information via security audits and deployment of Metadata Assistant
• Helping firms portabilize and remotely access their practice info via iPads, Android tablets, iPhones and Android phones – securely, and yes, with Macs as well
• Evaluating their overall use of technology and finding ways to be more profitable and more productive
• Making sure your practice is protected by multiple layer backup systems that actually work
• Helping firms find their way into the “cloud,” often by building their private, secure cloud
• Providing internal CLE for practices on tech and practice management topics
• Teaching law school courses around the country on legal technology for 2Ls and 3Ls
• And as always, traveling the country educating legal professionals in live CLE programs on tech and practice management topics
• Building virtual practices that extend your client reach across state and even international borders without the cost of office space

We’re happy to help your practice as well – just email me and I’ll be happy to chat about it to see if we’re the right folks to assist. MicroLaw has been caring for the tech and practice management needs of law practices and legal organizations for more than 28 years – we’re the originals and we’re ready to help you best help your own practice. It starts with a call to 414-540-9433 or an email to rkodner@microlaw.com – it’s that simple. And it’s far more cost effective than you might imagine.

This entire situation seems ridiculous. Apparently the previous policy allowed people to work at home full-time and NEVER come into the office. It would seem that some kind of middle ground makes much more sense.

I don’t know about you but I’m constantly performing math calculations – money math, that is. What that’s meant is typically using either an operating system’s built-in inadequate calculator or if I’m working on a Windows system, I always use Moffsoft’s wonderful Freecalc for years (unlike built-in calculator apps/utilities, it runs a scrollable tape – invaluable).

But still, unless I size my on-screen windows just right or drag the calculator into my second or third display, it’s kind of a pain with the calculator disappearing behind my Word or PowerPoint window. Egads, quelle frustration! (sorry about the lapse into French – dredging it up for a summer visit to Montreal).

Purely by accident, I stumbled across the curiously named Canon  X Mark I Slim combo Bluetooth mouse AND calculator. This not some $2 flimsy Chinese made disposable mouse. It’s a solidly built device that ingeniously blends calculator functions and a mouse in a physically comfortable and elegant device with good hand “feel.” The calculator has an LCD display on the top center section of the mouse. A button turns the calculator off (but there’s no real reason to since it doesn’t interfere with mouse functions and its hard to accidentally press the sturdy calculator keys.

The device has a switch underneath for pairing with Windows or Mac systems. It paired with both my Toshiba Portege Z835 Windows 8 laptop and my MacBook Air running Mountain Lion – within a couple of seconds – and then worked flawlessly. It runs on two AAA batteries and battery life is so far unknown. As a Bluetooth device, that means it doesn’t require a dedicated “Nano Receiver” which can easily get lost.

For me, the point is that if I had to remember to bring a physical calculator, I’d always forget to travel with it. But I never forget my mouse. Brilliant in a very down-to-earth way.

The killer feature is the “Send” button. Once you’ve performed your calculation and the total is displayed, pressing the “Send” button will send the displayed figure to your computer at the cursor point. As a thirty-plus year gadgeteer, I’m not easily impressed, but this is SO useful for what I do, I’m sure I displayed a very silly grin if anyone had been watching me.

And the best part is that I bought it at Amazon for $15 with free Prime 2-day shipping. I’m going to order another one so I have a spare in case I lose it or break it. Oh, and as a nice additional touch, it comes with a drawstring protective bag.

Highly recommended gadget almost anyone would find useful every day!

Periodically I have clients who ask about paper feeding issues with their printers or scanners. I’m sure you’ve experienced this from time to time. Your scanner likes to grab several sheets of paper at a time or the paper skews when being pulled into your printer. The cause, often, is dirty feed rollers. The silicone or rubber rollers, being somewhat sticky by their nature, pick up paper dust. This build-up lowers the friction against the paper and causes slippage. There you go – a royal pain.

The answer is cleaning the rollers, but not the way you might think of doing it. What I hear usually is a DIY approach involving Q-Tips and rubbing alcohol. And then a note of pleased self-satisfaction at a small personal victory over recalcitrant technology. Good! Oh wait . . . NOT so good (the alcohol part, that is).

I don’t know if anyone really remembers the typewriter days but there was something called “typewriter platen fluid.” This was used to clean the roller inside of the carriage. Over time, paper dust would build up and it  would lose its grippiness. Platen fluid would clean it without damaging the rubber.

So just after indoctrinating us that Chromebooks were to be inexpensive little laptops intended to be a window into a purely cloudy world, the skies become even cloudier and, arguably, more interesting. With Acer’s $199 C7  Chromebook on one end of the total-cloud spectrum, Google itself has released the Pixel, offered initially at $1299 up to $1499 on the far other end of the range.

Sold by Google at the Play store and apparently soon at Best Buy too, this  machine is obviously intended to be a direct competitor to the Apple MacBook Pro series. A 3.5ish lb. technical powerhouse with an Intel Core i5, the highest resolution display ever to be offered on a laptop (yes, higher than the Apple Retina displays) which also happens to be a 13″ touchscreen, either a 32Gb or 64Gb SSD (small because, remember, your stuff is supposed to be in the cloud, not local), 1 TB of Google Drive space, and interestingly, 12 free GoGoInflight sessions – jumpstarting your always online from anyplace, any time experience. It’s carved out of aluminum, as is de rigeur among premium systems.

Lots of initial looks are online and it’s for sale right now and shipping now from the Google store.

What does it mean? Certainly that Google intends to be taken seriously as a hardware provider, throwing a high-end gauntlet in the face of Apple. Could this end up, interestingly, being a pro-Microsoft move for those early fans of Microsoft Office 365 and Skydrive?

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of this. It seems a bit pricey for me, given the small SSD, but I guess that’s the whole idea. And it is a touchscreen while no MacBook model offers that capability. And perhaps the price point argument is that if it’s not similar to a MacBook Pro, it couldn’t be seen as a legitimate peer.

But if you’ve got ideas, email me here and let me know what you make of this.

In case you don’t get the ABA LPM e-zine, “Law Practice Today,” here’s my article from the February 2013 issue (also online here):

Title: Buying Smart: The Right Technology Makes More Than it Costs

Are you “buying smart” when it comes to tech in your practice, or just “saving a buck?”

There’s nothing more expensive than buying the wrong technology for your practice. Except, perhaps, buying the “right stuff” and implementing it poorly. Sometimes, the lowest-cost technology over the long haul isn’t necessarily the least expensive to purchase. Unfortunately, the old proverb “penny wise and pound foolish” traps even tech-savvy lawyers and dooms them to ineffective technology, or worse, more chaos with new tools than they experienced previously with the “obsolete” stuff.

Buying smart and buying right can turn even a single technology addition, such as a desktop scanner or new document management system, into a profit center – generating more profit in many situations than a new leveraged billable person.

Here’s an example, based on feedback from one of my clients. A 65-year-old small-firm lawyer was concerned that he was forgetting to enter many small time entries; he said he remembered the half-day blocks for contract drafting or a client meeting, but that he routinely forgot to enter the myriad 1/10 or 2/10 of an hour timeslips for things like responding to emails or taking a phone call. He estimated that on an average day he forgot two or three 1/10 hour time entries.

I asked him, “so how much do you think forgetting those little time entries every single day costs you?” He said, “I don’t even want to think about it.” I suggested we do some basic legal business math and asked for a legal pad. We took his average net hourly rate of $200 and for the sake of math simplicity, we presumed he failed to record 15 minutes per day (he shook his head at this point and said “And a lot more on some days . . . “). Here’s the calculation:

• .25 hours X $200/hour = $50 X 5 days per week = $250 X 50 working weeks per year = $12,500

$12,500.

That’s real money, and it shocked him to see that the little 1/10 or 2/10 timeslips he was losing daily, which seemed like a “cost of doing business” as he described it, added up over time. He reminded me that it was actually probably double that because he was underestimating the lost time.

So keep that number in your mind – $12,500 (he was thinking “more like $20,000 in reality”).

My advice was to implement his firm’s first fully integrated financial and practice management system. In his case, it was Tabs 3 and Tabs PracticeMaster Premier, the venerable and widely-used system from Software Technology, Inc. (www.tabs3.com). We also recommended he integrate these systems with the Worldox legal document/email management system and Microsoft Outlook. Together, the four systems tightly connect to form a unified law practice management system.

One of the key characteristics of the Tabs PracticeMaster practice management system, as some others do as well, is to allow many entries in the system that would normally be made in the course of a normal workday, to be turned into time entries without having to remember to separately create a time-entry. Examples include electronically jotting down the notes from a phone call with co-counsel, or posting a time for a call with the court in the calendaring system, or saving a document to a client’s electronic matter file.

So the idea is simple – you get off the phone with co-counsel on a case (or during the call if you’re using a microphone or headset) and you jot down your notes and save them to the matter’s file in the practice management system. Now in the old world my client once lived in, he had to then remember to find his PAPER multi-part timesheet (I’m serious – and this was in 2011) and write down the timeslip, hopefully remembering the right codes. More often than not, he told himself “I’ll remember to enter that at the end of the day because I have to take this call that’s waiting for me.” As 5 PM rolled around and he struggled to recall all his “little” time entries (while trying to dash out the door to pick up his wife for dinner), his mind inevitably went blank and the entries disappeared forever into the “financial ether.”

But now, Tabs PracticeMaster pops up and pre-fills a timeslip for him for a pre-determined amount of time (decided during the pre-implementation setup process for the program) – 2/10 of an hour in his case. All he has to do is click to “OK” it, and he has a time entry recorded, where one would have otherwise been lost.

Tabs 3 (the billing module) and Tabs PracticeMaster Premier (the practice management module) cost his firm around $2000 fully implemented for four people, including software costs, training and professional services. After the first 12 months of use I asked him how it was going and he said, “This program you put in front of me made me an extra $21,000 this year!” I reminded him that it wasn’t, in fact, “extra,” but had been his money all along; it just wasn’t being captured.

So about $2000 of initial expense, plus a couple of hundred dollars per year for ongoing software maintenance works out as follows:

• Cost per year – first year = $2000 startup cost including first year of software maintenance. Subsequent years = approximately $300 in software maintenance. Five-year cost = $2000 + $1200 = $3200
• Return on $3200 = $21,000 per year in “extra” captured time X 5 years = $105,000
• Net return after costs = $105,000 – $3200 = $101,800 more top-line revenue

That was a clear example of buying smart – the right software, implemented properly, measured well and generating a proportionately enormous return on the dollars spent.

So the essence of buying smart really has little to do with “getting the best deal,” whatever that might actually mean. A lawyer who proudly and perhaps smugly suggests that the DIY Excel spreadsheet she created 15 years earlier to track all her time and boasts that it “cost me nothing and works great” is deluding herself. If she’s not capturing the three of four 1/10 of an hour entries she admitted to forgetting, and her technology tools don’t help her to remember or act as a financial safety net to help her capture that time somehow, the cost is enormous. Here’s what I explained to her, again, asking for a yellow pad to do the legal business math neither she (nor I) had learned in law school:

• Cost of not entering three 1/10 hour time entries at her net realized hourly rate of $175/hour = $52.50 per day X 5 days per week = $262.50 X 50 working weeks per year = $13,125
• $13,125 per year is the cost of not spending about $1500 for a fully implemented financial/practice management system to help automate the capture of that time.

The “bargain” Excel spreadsheet was put out to pasture the following week and she wondered why she hadn’t done this years ago.

So what are some ways you can “buy smart” in your practice? The following tips will help ensure that you spend just the right amount – not too much, not too little – and generate a provable, measurable profit on the money you spend on your technology:

• Look for areas where you waste otherwise billable time. Examples include time spent looking for information you can only find in a paper file, or being honest with yourself about how many “little” time entries you forget to enter on a typical day, or how often you “reinvent the wheel” and redraft language in a flat-fee matter (like estate planning) that you know you wrote before and could’ve leveraged, if only you had been able to find it.
• Assign amounts of time you spend subsidizing those activities.
• Take out a legal pad and do the “legal business math” – multiply the amount of otherwise billable time wasted by your approximate average hourly or realized hourly rate.
• That figure is your RRT (Revenue Recapture Target) – in other words, what you can expect to additionally bill if you can find a way to recapture that time,
• Then whether you decided to represent yourself pro se on your tech matters, seek out the advice of your state bar’s practice management advisor, or retain a professional legal technology consultant, find the technology tools that will specifically address each area of waste. Perhaps a financial/practice management system that automates timeslip entry or a tool like Chrometa (www.chrometa.com) that captures all your time spent on your computer systems to be imported into your billing system, or a desktop scanner such as the popular Fujitsu ScanSnap in its latest ix500 iteration (www.scansnap.com), and document manager like Worldox GX3 (www.worldox.com) or NetDocuments (www.netdocuments.com) that turns physical paper into electronic paper – in real-time as soon as it hits your desk, and then makes it all instantly searchable so the wheel never has to be reinvented again. In other words, plug the gaps and recapture YOUR otherwise wasted time and get it billed out and collected. Or use an iPad or Android tablet (or iPhone or Android smartphone) with Chrometa to capture time when it’s not convenient to fire up your Windows or Mac laptop, and then review the time captured, import it and bill it (http://www.chrometa.com/mobile.html).
• Of course, spending as little as possible is still smart business. For commodity tech items like printers, scanners, mainstream software like Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Office, use internet pricing engines like Pricegrabber.com or Google Product Search (www.google.com/products) to get the very best pricing.

Then, mostly importantly, always work to “spot the issues” – something we lawyers all were taught to do by every law school. Work to root out the areas where otherwise billable or productive time is wasted, and then assume the answer to the question “is there technology that can put an end to that and turn most or all of it into billable time” is going to be some version of “yes.”

I field issues from clients about what version of Microsoft Office to use/order all the time. And it’s a legitimate question since the array of choices are really complicated. And with the advent of the latest “Miscrosoft Office 365″ nomenclature, it’s even MORE confusing.

So let’s try and sort this out, shall we? Here’s the scoop on the three different license types:

• OEM Version – this version is typically the least costly and is intended to be sold with new hardware (i.e. bundled with a Dell,HP or Lenovo PC). It’s also totally legitimate to sell it via sites likebuycheapsoftware.com (you’ll usually get a small bag containing a non-descript circuit board – the “new hardware”). If sites like this weren’t legitimate, they’d have been shut down long ago. They serve a valuable role reducing unsold OEM software from the channel. BIG CAVEATS: Cannot legally be transferred to another machine and for one system only.
• Retail Box Version – through Office 2010, this is a version that could typically be installed on two or three PCs depending on the Office version (as long as it would not be used on more than one system at a time) and could be legally transferred to another system (uninstall/reinstall). CAVEAT: With Office 2013′s release, this is no long true - transfer is not allowed and the license is tied to the original installed system.
• Volume Licenses Version – a variety of these plans exist but in the small-firm world the MOLP (Microsoft Open License Plan) starts at 5 users. This is also the only version that will work in a Windows Terminal Server /Windows RDS (Remote Desktop Services p/k/a Terminal Services) or in a Citrix environment. These versions are transferrable to other systems as well – they are NOT tied to a specific machine. This makes them the most flexible, albeit the most costly licensing option (or stated another way, “more flexibility = higher cost”).
• Subscription Services Version – a new approach starting with Office 365 and 2013 – pay per year in both consumer/business and student editions.For example, my son just purchased a $79.95 educational license for Microsoft Office 365 including local installable Windows or Mac software (Mac is Office 2011), web versions of the same, 20 Gb of Microsoft Skydrive cloud storage space, and 4 years of updates/subscription for 2 systems - quite a deal with students, faculty and school administration (http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/pd/productID.259180100?WT.term=microsoft+office+for+students&WT.mc_id=pointitsem_Microsoft+US_google_5+-+Office+15+Suites&WT.medium=cpc&WT.campaign=5+-+Office+15+Suites&WT.srch=1&WT.content=hqeDd8uQ&WT.source=google&cshift_ck=7b6ee8e4-cf4a-4e78-a51c-cc10a0d853fdcshqeDd8uQ). Consumer versions are $99 per year at retail but are for up to 5 (yes, five) systems: http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/details~productID~5881.asp.
  

So is it safe to buy OEM versions of Office 2010 from Buycheapsoftware? Yes – and they include a free update to Office 2013 currently. They are about $153 right now (for 1 user -http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/details~productID~5004.asp) Putting it on a machine at the end of its life cycle doesn’t make sense. But it can be very economical to put it on a new machine. They also sell the retail version which is now $259 for a 2 PC license with free Office 2013 upgrade – a really good deal if you need two installs and it is transferable (remember, last retail version allowing this) (http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/details~productID~4951.asp).

And yes, there’s a big difference between Office 365 and Office 365 Home Premium (and the business version to be released at the end of February. Office 365 is a collection of web-ized apps to run Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook from a browser. These versions include the most common functions in the regular versions of these programs. but not all functions. They are sold on a subscription basis from $6 to $20/month/user with info here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/compare-plans.aspx. Office 365 Home Premium is actual software you load, per the above for an annual fee. Really confusing – I know . . .

I’ve been buying from buycheapsoftware.com for many years – they’re terrific and have very aggressive pricing. I wouldn’t hesitate to
recommend them.

There’s an excellent article on Wikipedia on this same subject, scroll down to the chart near the bottom especially: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_2013.

Well by now everyone is well aware of the leveraged buyout of Dell Computer by a group led by founder and Chairman Michael Dell, along with a consortium of venture partners include Silver Lake Investors and Microsoft. I’ll leave the financial analysis and LBO breakdown to the quantitative numbers wonks out there. What I’m more interested in is what this means for the legions of law practice consumers of Dell computers and support services.

The Big Questions You’re Undoubtedly Wondering About:

1. Are you SOL in the wake of the privatization efforts that seem to be focused on turning off the public light of scrutiny on the remaking of Dell, a la IBM post-shedding its PC division to Lenovo, into an IBM-like service-focused profit machine?
2. What will happen to that shiny new Dell PowerEdge Server you just installed next month, next year, or three years from now?
3. Should we continue to purchase Dell computer products at all?

The answers to these three big questions is yet to be determined. The ink on the deal isn’t really dry yet – there are hurdles still to be jumped apparently. But presuming the deal is done, this is likely going to be a positive change for Dell product consumers. With the ability to avoid the criticism of shareholders, the company can clean house any way it sees fit. That is likely to lead to an improvement in the range of, and quality of services. After all, one of the prime motivators behind this acquisition is the ability to pull down a curtain so we don’t have to see all the dirty work that goes from shifting the company’s core emphasis from being a hardware purveyor into a powerhouse services shop. Getting services right is bound to be part of the equation.

Will Dell peddle its PC business, the same way IBM did? Perhaps. It IS a massive business unit, responsible for billions of dollars in sales every year, even in a shrinking PC market. Lenovo has made a significant success out of IBM’s former PC business, although admittedly under the lessened regulatory environment known as China.

Will we stop recommending Dell systems in favor of HP or Lenovo or Apple? No. Dell systems, particularly their servers, still offer a very sound value and are likely to continue to power our clients’ practices for years to come. If Dell does spin off the PC business, in all likelihood, it will translate to better service, continued low pricing and more product variety under the stewardship of a new owner whose focus isn’t diluted like Dell’s is now.

So . . . I think this is near term good news for small law practices who either recently acquired or were planning on purchasing Dell’s systems. And if you happen to have been a Dell shareholder, you just got yourself about a 37% premium on your share value – not a bad day’s work.

A company called Rapid7 has uncovered a really danger security hole that exists in most wireless routers. A setting that activates a function called Universal Plug and Play (usually referred to as “UPnP”) can expose the internal network to intrusion and relatively easy exploit.

For the more technically inclined, read this description of the issue or read this one.

For the rest of us, Andy Greenberg from Forbes magazines explains it in plain language here.

The point is that whether this applies to a router in your law firm or your home router, you need to disable UPnP. Odds are nearly 100% you won’t notice it at all. Do this now – this one is a serious risk to your firm’s and clients’ information and all your personal information at home.

Please take this seriously. If you don’t know how to access your router’s control panel, find the manual for it online and read how to turn off UPnP (or have your IT folks do it for you).

So you found a shiny new iPad, iPhone, Android phone or Android tablet under your holiday tree/bush/in your stocking, hung with care last month?

What about security on mobile devices? A passphrase alone isn’t enough (although it’s a place to start and everyone should set one – a 4 digit “PIN” is much better than nothing and easier than “pass-swipes.”

All tablet and smartphone users need to install and use security software such as Lookout (https://www.lookout.com – the free version is adequate, although the premium version offers useful tools for $30/year). This will protect against intrusion including Bluetooth’s exploitable weaknesses as well as backup the content. Also, activate and learn to use remote wipe tools in case the device is stolen (iPhone or iPad:http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2696; Android:http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173390) and also the Find my Phone/Tablet functions. Newbies virtually NEVER prepare for device loss or intrusion and it makes them easy marks for hackers/thieves.

Also, on every laptop, it really makes sense to use a low-cost recovery/remote wipe service like Lojack for Windows and Macs (http://www.absolute.com/lojackforlaptops/). The Premium edition is on sale for less than $90 for three years – it’s crazy not to have this protection,

Firms should mandate its use as part of internal policy (same for institutionalizing the use of tools like Lookout). This should be the case for both firm-owned and individually-owned devices used for firm business purposes.

These should probably be at the top of the list for newbies – and while the situations sound geeky and uber-techie, fortunately the solutions are incredibly easy – easy enough for any newbie.

Some cool videos to celebrate America’s 236th birthday:

I was thinking about a tip for today and it hit me with the sparkling commotion of a roman candle – digital ways to celebrate America’s 236th birthday! So here are a collection of apps and links to help you celebrate the 4th of July with high-tech panache:

1. Sousa Marches – not just any Sousa recordings, but original wax cylinder recordings ranging from 1895 to 1916. Fascinating, especially to hear the original tempos. Not surprising some of these recordings are pretty scratchy, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into American musical history by the King of Marches. Click here.
2. UCSB Cylinder Recording Preservation Project - in the same vein, I’m fascinated by the idea of LISTENING to American history. The University of California-Santa Barbara has been engaged in a musical preservation project involving the digitization of the earliest audio recordings – mostly from Edison wax cylinders, with later recordings in 78 rpm format, made available here. The collection is large, growing and impressive – with a deep selection of early recordings not just from the U.S. but from across the globe, organized by nation of origin and type of recording. My favorite section is called “Home Recordings” – you can actually listen to common sounds of the day – parents, children, their pets and farm animals, oh my! Seriously, be careful with this – it’s easy to fritter away an entire otherwise billable day listening.
3. Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks App (iPad) – a far cry from being there, but it was fun to watch last year.
4. The American Revolution: Interactive (iPad) – I spent over an hour digging through this interactive story of the War for Independence. After all, it’s easy to lose site of the basis for the holiday merry-makings tomorrow – brave and resolute people fought to create our nation all those years ago, long before Weber grilled burgers hit the scene.
5. The Declaration of Independence App (iPad) – I think that every parent should read the entire Declaration of Independence to their children every 4th. It’s stirring, dramatic, dangerous, bold, principled, eloquent and ultimately, told off the most powerful man in the Western world at the time – King George III. I get goosebumps every time I read it (and seeing the signatures of all those brave Patriots who risked life and limb for their beliefs)
6. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops – Stars and Stripes Forever – stirring. A must download. Crank it up!

Happy 236th Birthday America! Have a safe holiday everyone and teach your children about where our nation came from. If it takes an iPad to get their attention, so be it.

Well, maybe not ANYthing. Like, you couldn’t actually use the tip for today to convert from Catholicism to Judaism or from being a raging narcissist to an altruistly humble saint. Or from a total technopesant to an AJAX-oriented HTML5 script jockey. Or . . . well . . . you get it.

What I’m talking about is converting from one file format to another. Zamzar is a website offering free online file conversions. For example, I just converted a PDF file to a JPG and had it email it to, which allowed me to receive the converted JPG as an attachment and then immediately organize it in Outlook to Worldox to my case file. 15 seconds at most. I’m impressed – this is SO much easier than more traditional file organization tools.

For free, you can convert files of up to 100 Mb in size. You can upgrade paid plans starting at $7/month which allow larger file sizes to be converted (helpful for bigger video files – like AVI to WMV, for example) – info on the various upgraded plans is here.

Check out the myriad of document, image, video and other file formats that can be converted here.

Zamzar is my new best friend after quickly and easily handlng a Flash to Windows Movie File format from me. It should be part of every law firm’s technology tools arsenal, especially for managing all the oddball files one might have to deal with in a discovery situation.

Warning – at first this might seem like a gag tip – I can assure you that it’s not only real, but really useful!

Here’s the scenario: It’s Friday before a weekend that, for some lucky stiffs, is a holiday weekend, given the 4th happening mid-week. Inevitably, to escape the heat scorching much of the U.S., you might decide to hit the local cinema for some air-conditioned visual entertainment.

But here’s the thing. In the era of sodas pushing the 32 ounce range (except for New York City), this poses a serious problem. Let’s not beat about the bush here – Murphy’s Law dictates that you’ll need to hit the restroom at the worst possible time, missing key scenes.

As with so much in life today, there’s an app for that.  RunPee, available for free for both for iPad and Android, bills itself as an answer to the fact that movie theaters don’t give you a “pause” button when mother nature calls.

So here’s what it does. You run the app and tell it what movie you’re watching. According to them, here’s what happens:

“The RunPee app is primarily here to help you enjoy your movie going experience by telling you the best times to Run and Pee without missing anything important. The RunPee family – Dan, Mom and Sis – see each wide release movie that comes out on opening day. We watch for 3-5 minute spans in the movie where nothing really exciting, or funny, or important happens. ( Obviously this can be next to impossible for really good movies but we do our best. )

We start looking for peetimes about 30 minutes into the movie and we stop when there’s only 20-30 minutes left in the movie. For short movies of about 90 minutes there may only be one peetime. But for movies over 2 hours there may be 2-3 peetimes.

Each peetime has a synopses of what happens. So if you do need to run and pee then you’ll be able to come back to the theater knowing exactly what happened while you were taking care of business.

We also give you a lot more:

• Notes from the person who took the peetimes to let you know which one we would suggest using and which ones to use only in case of emergency.
• If you need to stay after the end credits for any extra scenes.
• A synopsis of the first 3 minutes of a movie just in case you are running late.
• A grade and short review for each movie.
• Screens that show information about your selected movie from RottenTomatoes.com and IMDb.com
• Quick links to the soundtrack, if any.”

It’s not often you encounter an app that at first blush, makes you giggle and think “that’s utterly silly” but that proves itself to be so useful. So maximize your movie dollars this weekend and beyond with RunPee. I’m serious – I use this and its terrific! In fact, I plan on using it tonight when I go to see “Moonrise Kingdom.”

Is there anyone who hasn’t repeatedly sworn under their breath about their cell carrier’s voicemail? Been there, done that, got the ugly t-shirt (as my techno.pal Susan Ross used to say). What I always wondered was my I simply couldn’t get my cellular voicemail via email. Since I live and die via email everyday, that just seemed logical, obvious, rational and a poster child for the concept of a foregone conclusion. But no such thing existed, at least not from my current and prior carriers: Verizon and Sprint, respectively.

And then by accident, I stumbled across YouMail.com and it was as if someone hacked my brainwaves and stole my never actually elucidated idea. YouMail is a free web service that can send you all your cellular voicemail via email. For free. Did I mention, it’s free? There’s really no catch. It works with all cell carriers and all types of cell phones that have a voicemail plan – how’s that for inclusivity?

For an additional fee, you can buy various editions of their Read-It add-on which will transcribe your voicemails as well (with reasonably good accuracy – with transcription done by actual humans). Costs start at $4.99/month to transcribe the first 20 seconds of 20 voicemails to $39.99/month for unlimited messages with the first 60 seconds of each transcribed – and various pricing/message permutations in between (click here for the details).

In addition to receiving YouMail via email, you can also use their free Android, iPad and BlackBerry apps. They also offer a couple of “Pro” plans which increase voicemail storage and eliminate the ads that appear on the web interface – it’s currently only $19.99 per year and probably worth it if you want to save a ton of voicemail for later access – you can get it here.

Interestingly, there’s a $29.99 per month Read-It Extended Length plan – adding transcription of up to 4 minutes of every message – again, by actual human transcriptionists who seem to do a pretty impressive job – this would be ideal for basic dictation from the road via your cell.

The bottom line is that it costs nothing to try – and I’m guessing you’ll find YouMail as addictive and useful as I do. And then then try out at least the Basic Read-It transcription plan – it’s pretty cheap and really rocks.

I had an idea. I just finished a new “60 Tips” CLE. Instead of just posting these on the popular MicroLaw CLE download page, I”ve decided to start a new series here at Ross Ipsa Loquitur called “60 Tips Deconstructed.” This will be a new tip-a-day series, direct from the CLE materials. They’ll be posted every weekday (and maybe some weekend days too when I feel tipspired :-)).

Without further adieu, here’s my first tip:

The Next Biggest Frightening Frontier – Smartphone Security and Backup

• As smartphones get smarter and we rely on them more, expect security exploitation to explode – viruses, Bluetooth exploitation, and general security issues including what happens when you misplace your iPhone or Android phone (or it gets stolen)?
• And what about smartphone data as we can do more and more on them? Think of the growing amounts of confidential client and firm data on your smartphone now? After all, that’s the point of a smartphone – syncing with your office and home systems.
• Lookout is a free backup and security service for iPhone and Android phones. There is also a Premium edition for Android users for $2.99/month or $29.99 per year. Sorry Blackberry and Windows Phone folks, you’re out of luck.
• The Premium edition adds remote lock/wipe, photo and call history backup and premium support on the Android edition.
• It includes anti-virus protection, security, location service (if missing or stolen with remote “kill” capability) and also data/settings backup functions.
• I’ve been using it for almost two years and “feel” safer because of it.
• Now supports iPad and Android tablets as well as iPhone and Android phones
• Android Download is here
• iPhone/iPad Download is here

The bottom line: it’s crazy not to use at least the free edition of Lookout on any iPad, iPhone, Android phone or tablet. Would you use your computer without protection? Of course not. So why would you ignore your other computer and leave it unprotected (a/k/a that smartphone in your pocket or tablet on your lap)? Just do this now – seriously! No downside, only upside.