Features
Document Management: Go Green, Save Green »
by Shell Haffner

In Search of a Paperless Office »
by J. Anthony Vittal and Yvonne M. Renfrew

The Virtual Law Office: Engineered for Efficiency »
by Joseph Kashi

Is Cloud Computing Green Computing? »
by Jack Newton

Disposing of E-waste »
by Andrea Cannavina

Why Pay More? Buying Refurbished Office Equipment »
by Wells H. Anderson

Green Efficiency Tips »

2010 Techno-Gift Guide »
by Jeffrey Allen

Columns
ROAD WARRIOR
by Jeffrey Allen
Data Security in a Mobile World  »
THE CHAIR’S CORNER
by Joseph A. DeWoskin
Bein’ Green  »
GENERAL PRACTICE, SOLO AND SMALL FIRM DIVISION NEWS
“Shaping Our Future” Membership Questionnaire; Law Student Mentoring Program; ABA Midyear Meeting Details; GPSolo Division Spring Meeting Info  »
PRODUCT REVIEW
by Jeffrey Allen
West Case Notebook  »
PRODUCT REVIEW
by J. Anthony Vittal
WordPerfect Office X5  »
PRODUCT REVIEW
by Jared D. Correia
Credenza  »
BEING SOLO
by David Leffler
Credit Card Processing for Solos  »
TECHNO ETHICS
by James Ellis Arden
Good for the Planet, Bad for Your Ethics?  »
SITES FOR SORE EYES
by Jim Calloway and Courtney Kennaday
Websites for the New Year  »
MAC USER
by Victoria L. Herring
My Working iVacation  »

FEATURES
Getting the Highest Return From Legal Technology
Tools »
How to evaluate technology tools wisely to enhance operations.
Legal Project Management for the 21st Century
Have an aversion to new techniques? Open your mind for higher profits.
Law on the Run: Is Anyone Cleaning Up After Me?
Automating the erasure of metadata can save you cash over the long haul.

COLUMNS
MacNotes »
Apple’s new releases.
SurvivingEmail »
Email Marketing: Best Practices From One of the Experts
TechNotes »
BlackBerry 101: The Hidden Essentials
Sites for Sore Eyes »
Do You Have an Appetite for Apps?
ProductNotes »
HTC Evo 4G and Android 2.2 Operating System.
DivisionNotes »
Difference Makers Awards, Council Nominations, and a teleconference primer
on U.S. immigration law.

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Learn the Benefits of GPSolo Membership »
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A service of the ABA General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division
Technology eReport
Technology eReport Newsletter | ABA General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division
http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/ereport/2010/vol9/num4/index.html[11/4/2010 11:10:30 AM]

Image courtesy of Apple, Inc.

The iPad comes with a high-resolution, 9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS (in-plane switching) display. Apple designed the iPad to display content in portrait or landscape orientation. The IPS display technology has a wide, 178-degree viewing angle. The iPad weighs in at about a pound and a half and measures 9.56” x 7.47” x 0.5”. Apple claims up to a ten-hour battery life for the iPad.  Apple has made the battery inaccessible, as has become its custom, so you cannot simply pop in a new battery and must rely on an external power supply for recharging or operating an iPad with a discharged battery.  Fortunately, my experience with the iPad to date supports the claim of long battery life.  I have not tried to push the ten hour limit, but I have used my iPad for several hours at a time without exhausting as much as 50% of its power.

Apple offers two basic versions of the iPad: WiFi only and WiFi plus 3G. Each version also gives you the choice of 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB of memory. I encourage you to opt for the higher memory units, as the iPad has no provision for additional memory.  I chose the 64GB WiFi+3G version for myself.  I have already maxed out the memory and find myself moving apps, books, movies and music on and off the unit far more often than I would like in order to accommodate different circumstances.

The iPad has the same docking connector as the iPhone and iPod. Like the iPhone, it has no other ports for data or charging.  Apple offers a number of accessories: The list includes a dock, a keyboard dock, a case that folds up to make a stand for you to use the iPad with its virtual keyboard, a VGA adapter that will let you connect the iPad to a projector or other VGA device, and a camera connection kit that will allow you to transfer pictures directly to your iPad. You can also use the Apple Wireless Keyboard and other Bluetooth accessories with the iPad.

The WiFi iPad requires a hotspot to give you Internet access. The WiFi plus 3G version works through accessible hotspots and also gives you the option of a 3G cellular connection. Apple set up an arrangement with AT&T, which changed the plan very shortly after the iPad came to market and started selling with amazing rapidity.  The revised plans do away with the “all you can eat” data module and offer you the choice of 250 MB of data per month for $14.99 or XXGB for $YY.  AT&T’s programs come with cancellable monthly renewable terms, allowing you to cancel the plan or reinstate it whenever you want or need to do so.

The iPad’s larger screen offers a much better Internet experience than the iPhone or the iPod Touch.  It also provides better viewing for movies and pictures.  The iPad has a wide viewing angle, which enhances your viewing experience, but also means that people sitting on your side on an airplane or next to you at a lunch counter can easily read your screen. Available third party privacy screens can restrict the ability of others to see your screen, protect your privacy your clients’ confidentiality.  Consider a privacy screen a necessary accoutrement to the iPad if you desire to use it in a public place and have any semblance of privacy for your content.

Among its many talents, the iPad also functions as an eReader.  I find the iPad’s backlit clarity, high resolution and color technology far more pleasing than e-ink technology employed by the more traditional eReaders, such as the Kindle or the Nook.  Apple’s iBook App lets you buy books from Apple’s iTunes Store, organize them on your iPad, synch them between your iPad and your computer with the assistance of iTunes and read them very comfortably.  The chameleon-like iPad, also does a pretty decent Kindle and Nook imitation as well.  Amazon has made a free Kindle App available and Barnes & Noble has made its own reader app available at no charge.  The installation of these Apps gives you the ability to access the entire Barnes & Noble and Amazon collections of electronic reading materials, acquire them, coordinate them, read them and use them with features substantially the same as the Kindle or the Nook.

Apple says that almost all the Apps in its store will run on the iPad.  While that has proven technically accurate, many Apps require modification to take advantage of the iPad’s screen size and features

If you use Apple’s Calendar and Address Book, your calendar and contacts will look better (and appear larger and easier to read) on the iPad than on the iPod or the iPhone.  Apple also tuned up its Mail program, creating a unified in-box that allows you to see all your unread mail at one time, without having to go back and forth between accounts.   The iOS 4 operating system Apple released with the iPhone 4 also includes a number of additional features that will come to the iPad when Apple makes the iOS4 available for the iPad.  Apple has announced that it will make the iOS4 available for the iPad sometime this fall.

You can find out more about the iPad at (www.apple.com/ipad). You can buy the iPad online at (http://store.apple.com/us) or arrange to pick one up at your local Apple Store.

What’s Missing?

The ability to expand the iPad’s memory through the addition of memory cards would make it much easier to use the iPad as a picture album, a movie viewer, a music player, an eReader, and a storage device for a variety of other information. It would, for example, allow you to get a media card to store books or movies that you don’t need on a daily basis but want to have with you when you travel.  As Apple has not allowed the use of memory cards in the iPod or the iPhone, the odds favor Apple’s not making this feature available in the iPad.  Perhaps, future iterations of the iPad will increase the offered memory to 128 or even 256 GB when the price of such memory comes down.

A built-in webcam for use in videoconferencing would also have made the iPad much more useful.  I anticipate seeing Apple add this to a future iteration of the iPad, much as it has now done with the newest generation of its iPod Touch.

Conclusion.

The iPad is useful as an e-mail device, or as an Internet appliance, or as an eReader, or as a . . . pick a function, any function. While not as useful as a laptop, the iPad will enable me to travel to many meetings without a laptop. Its weight and size make it an easy fit for a briefcase or a large purse. I will likely carry it with me most of the time as it will do for me most of what I expect my laptop and my Kindle to do.

As a tool in a law office, I consider the iPad helpful (but pricey).  Nevertheless, I could not call it as essential.  It does offer conveniences, largely due to its size, weight and flexibility.  As a personal Internet appliance, however, it excels and will change the way many of us interact with the Internet at home and particularly on the road.  I have found sufficient uses for the iPad at work that I can justify the acquisition and I am certainly glad that I have one.

Copyright, 2010 by Jeffrey Allen.  All rights reserved.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Table of Contents of this issue of the Technology eReport follows:

FEATURES

Doing Law on the Web: eLawyering for Competitive Advantage

Using web-enabled document preparation to generate business.

iPhone-ix Rising

The trials and tribulations of switching to an iPhone.

COLUMNS

MacNotes

What’s an iPhone 4? So Very Much.

Surviving Email

SPAM: It’s Not Just Lunch Meat!

TechNotes

Cloud-Based File Storage and Synchronization Services: Access Your Files From Anywhere.

Sites for Sore Eyes

Where to Go to Schedule Your Meeting.

ProductNotes

BlackBerry 9700 and 9800.

DivisionNotes

ABA Annual Meeting and Free Tech Training.

ABOUT GPSOLO

Learn the Benefits of GPSolo

In the next several months the ABA will upgrade its entire website. In conjunction with that upgrade we anticipate adding product reviews and information about special officers from vendors and continue to expand and improve the Smart Soloing Center.

The Smart Soloing Center went live in conjunction with the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco last month. The GPSolo Division has appointed Jeff Allen to chair the Division’s Smart Soloing Center Content Committee. If you know of articles, links, or other information of use to solo, small firm, and general practice attorneys that we have not added to the site or if you have a product that you have used and found helpful and would like to review that product for the Center, please communicate that information to Jeff Allen at:  Jeffrey Allen, Graves & Allen, 436 14th Street, Suite 1400, Oakland, California 94612; Phone: 510-839-8777; Fax: 510-839-5192; email: jallenlawtek@aol.com.

The following lists the content of this issue:

Features
● New Technology Puts Jury Research at Your Fingertips »
Online jury research can provide a powerful, sophisticated, quick and costefficient
tool for attorneys to get the answers they need to the pressing questions
they have about their cases.
● Moving Your Practice Into the Cloud »
What considerations should be taken into account prior to opening a law office in
“the cloud.”
● Cold and Dead, From My Hands »
Love means never having to use new gadgets.
Columns
● MacNotes »
Come on over to iPad.
● TechNotes »
Is Canson Papershow ready for the Big League?
● ProductNotes »
ScanSnap S1300, QuickBooks 2010 for the Mac, and BigHand voice software.
● DivisionNotes »
A CLE event and Spring Meeting.
http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/ereport/2010/vol9/num1/index.html (1 of 3)3/24/2010 1:46:55 PM
Technology eReport Newsletter | ABA General Practice, Solo & Small Firm Division
Primary sponsor of the
GPSolo Division.
About GPSolo
● Learn the Benefits of GPSolo Membership »
❍ Award-Winning Periodicals
❍ Special Member Discounts
❍ Practice Area Committees
❍ Continuing Legal Education
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❍ Not a Member Yet? Join Now »
● Visit GPSolo’s Homepage »
The one-stop website for solos, small firmers, and general practitioners —
featuring news and articles about the profession as it affects you.

Enjoy.

http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/ereport/2009/vol8/num4/.

This issue has the following contents:

FEATURES

Is Your Website OK Today? » Attracting clients and making favorable impressions.

SaaS Security: Can You Trust Your Data in the Cloud? » How to pick the right SaaS provider, come rain or shine.

Setting Up a Web-Based Virtual Law Office » Practical and ethical considerations to address when moving online.

COLUMNS

MacNotes » Snow Leopard: snow job, or great new OS?

SurvivingEmail » Email sig files, social networks, and getting seen.

Sites for Sore Eyes » Where to go to learn about Windows 7.

TechNotes » Is Skype all hype, or is it a helpful tool?

ProductNotes » Casio EX-FC100 camera, Novatel MiFi 2200 USB modem, Google Wave, and PBworks.

DivisionNotes » Midyear Meeting events and an upcoming teleconference.

Ironically, this ability came to light when Amazon chose to delete copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindles of individuals who had acquired those titles from Amazon. The explanation that Amazon came up with is that they acquired the books from a source that did not have the copyright. Apparently, Amazon felt that it had the right to remove the books from its customer’s Kindles because it was Amazon and nobody could stop it.

This brings up an interesting issue. If Amazon can put what you order on your Kindle, they can put what they want on it as well. Now it is clear that they can remove what they choose from your Kindle.

Perhaps Sony has the better idea after all.  Interestingly, Sony recently released new software and hardware. I will post about those items later. For now, I feel violated by Big Brother Amazon. I am considering whether to simply turn off the Kindle and use it solely with what I already have on it. At the very least, I will minimize my exposure to Amazon’s Big Brotherly ways (and maximize my battery life) by leaving the radio off when I am not trying to load a new book.

http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/ereport/2009/vol8/num3/

This issue has the following contents:

FEATURES

Technology-Enabled Services: The Next Generation of SaaS »
How you can use them to increase your efficiency and profits without spending a lot of money.

COLUMNS

MacNotes »
Updated iPhone software will even help you find your phone if you lose it.

SurvivingEmail »
Could Google-hosted mailing lists make real money?

Sites for Sore Eyes »
Where to go to find out where and how to go: travel websites.

TechNotes »
How to primp your PDFs.

ProductNotes »
Xerox’s Phaser 8860MFPMFP and Quickbooks for the Mac.

DivisionNotes »
Call for Nominations of Officers and Council Members Election—2010/11, 2009 Fall Meeting and National Solo & Small Firm Conference