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Here’s a nice notebook at a nice price: the Asus U43Jc, a 14” laptop that can be purchased from Amazon until September 5 for $999 – with a $150 Amazon gift card thrown in, effectively bringing the price down to $849. That’s quite good for a notebook with these specs!

The notebook features a cover and palm rest made out of bamboo, making the case look very sleek in a furniture sort of way. (It also lets Asus tout how environmentally swell it is.) It’s got great parts inside: an Intel Core i5 processor; 4Gb of RAM; […] continued

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Previously:
The Sad State Of Law Office Software
Law Office Case Management In The Cloud
Advologix Practice Management
Postscript On Cloud Computing

Larry Port, founding partner of Rocket Matter, dropped by the news page yesterday and gently suggested that Rocket Matter is actually a fine name for a law office practice management program. (He might be right. It does have the advantage of using words in the English language, which seems hard to come by for new products these days.)

It drew my attention to a short collection of articles that can be […] continued

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In June I wrote an article about LogMeIn Express, a free and extremely easy to use service being tested by LogMeIn for quickly sharing a screen with one person or a small group of people.

When I went back to look at it recently, I discovered that the service has been renamed “Join Me” and moved to https://join.me, which is odd but certainly easy to tell people on the phone. At the moment they’re trying to make it look hip by rotating a selection of big photos (beach sandals, water coolers) and cute slogans on the […] continued

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Small businesses bought a lot of computers in 2004 and 2005. Windows XP had been on the market for three years and early compatibility problems had been resolved. Small businesses cleaned out the aging Windows 98 80386 computers to take advantage of the new OS and new programs.

This is the year to repeat the process. Windows 7 is a mature version of Windows Vista – for all intents and purposes, the current version of Windows has been on the market for three years and early compatibility problems have been resolved. Businesses should be clearing out the old Windows […] continued

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Previously:
The Sad State Of Law Office Software
Law Office Case Management In The Cloud
Advologix Practice Management

Take a step back and look at the technology in your business. There has been a large shift that you may not have noticed in technology costs.

Here’s the idea in this article (which happens to stand opposed to the idea of cloud computing, but never mind that):

“First recognize the old rules for the cost of computing have been reversed.

“The greatest cost components from highest to lowest:

• “Past:  1) hardware  2)

[…] continued

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If I’d thought about it, I would have realized that Google Translate had to exist. It does exactly what you’d expect from an online translator: type in a phrase and it can be translated into another language; type in a web address and it will present the entire page translated into another language. Try it! It’s fun to see your favorite web site in Turkish or Lithuanian.

Google has been updating it frequently with additional languages until now it’s possible to go back and forth between dozens of languages, including a couple of Chinese variations, Japanese and other […] continued

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Previously:
The Sad State Of Law Office Software
Law Office Case Management In The Cloud

I called Deepa Patel of Halak Consulting looking for a LexisNexis Certified Independent Consultant in the Bay Area who could help whip a client’s Time Matters installation into shape. The conversation quickly turned to the new product that she is also trained to handle, the one to which she has committed her own office and is clearly excited about.

Within a week I was looking at a demo of AdvologixPM and feeling my own sense of excitement about […] continued

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Previously:
The Sad State Of Law Office Software

I’m going to work up to specific products, but let’s start with the concept of storing valuable, confidential data in the cloud, on servers run by some big company.

As a lawyer in a small firm, think of the scariest example you can imagine – say, your highly sensitive letter to a client outlining the risks in your litigation strategy, or notes on the phone conversation with a client where she confessed to killing Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick. Save the file as a Word document on […] continued

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Microsoft released a patch yesterday that should be installed promptly on all Windows computers. Most of you will find that it was installed automatically on Monday night. If your computer restarted last night, you’re almost certainly fine – but be alert in case the Windows update icon is trying to get your attention from the lower right corner of your screen! If you want to make sure it was installed, look in the update history on your computer for KB2286198, the reference number for Microsoft’s security bulletin.

The patch fixes a particularly nasty vulnerability, yet another way that […] continued

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Almost every law office winds up using some kind of specialized line-of-business software. For most types of law, especially litigation, that means case management software designed to bring all the information about a matter into a single place – the contacts (client, opposing counsel, insurance agents, witnesses, deponent), the case calendar and deadlines, phone conversations, billing records, and if possible, links to documents and email.

In some respects those are just variations on the kinds of records that are tracked by many kinds of businesses. There is a certain comfort in having labels that are specific to your work, […] continued

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