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Office Depot has the very nice Microsoft cordless notebook mouse for only $8.99 after instant savings. This is the mouse I've been using with my notebook PC for the last year and it works great. Very long battery life on a single AA cell.
If you don't have a notebook PC because you didn't want to make a multi-thousand dollar investment in something you weren't sure you would use, your excuses just evaporated. Now you can buy a decent notebook PC for the price of a high-end PDA. Buy.com has the IBM ThinkPad T60 (refurbished) for $399.99 with free shipping. This is not a state-of-the-art machine, but it is a highly-regarded ThinkPad with enough power to do nearly everything a mobile lawyer needs to do.
If you have a smart phone or other PDA and want to carry many files and/or programs on it, you need a Secure Digital (SD) card to insert into the expansion slot of your device (such as a Treo). Buy.com has a huge 4 GB SD card on sale for just $29.95
If you want an inexpensive digital camera to carry in your pocket, briefcase, purse, or car for impromptu shooting opportunities, the June 2007 issue of Laptop magazine has a comparison test of cameras in the less than $150 range. Top ranked was the $129 HP Photosmart M537. It has 6 MP resolution and a 3X optical zoom lens.
If you thought you were cool five years ago when you popped for a 15" LCD monitor to replace your clunky old CRT, that coolness factor has disappeared. 15" is just too small for maximum productivity in a law office. Don't buy anything smaller than a 19" wide-screen today. Office Depot has the decent Acer 19" wide-screen LCD monitor on sale for $189.99, which is no doubt half of what you paid for you 15" LCD monitor five years ago. If you want the ultimate law office computer monitor, head upscale to the Samsung SyncMaster 22" wide-screen LCD. It is on sale at Office Depot for $319.99 after a $30 mail-in rebate.
Color laser printers are a great idea for a home office where they can print your legal work as well as your digital photos. The problem with most color lasers is their sheer size. They often don't fit well into the limited space of a home office. The Samsung CLP-300 is the world's smallest color laser printer. Office Depot has it on sale for $199.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate.
If you are just starting out, or are a solo practitioner, and you need a simple and cheap multi-line telephone system, Office Depot has the RCA 4-line corded business phone on sale for $99.99. You can add up to 16 cordless handsets for $79.99 each.
Circuit City has a good deal on a 2 GB SD flash memory card from PNY for only $24.99.
If you've recently upgraded the hard drive in your PC and have your old hard drive sitting around idle, put it to work as an external drive. Circuit City has the Mad Dog Multimedia Aluminum external had drive enclosure on sale for only $14.99 after a $15 mail-in rebate. I have two of these enclosures holding my backup drives. The aluminum structure works well at dispersing heat from the drive, eliminating the need for a noisy cooling fan.
If you have a Treo smart phone or other PDA, you probably use Documents-to-Go to read and edit Word, Excel, and other MS Office files on your device. These files can be Hotsync'd over to your device, or they may arrive as email attachments.
Unfortunately, the default file format for Microsoft Office 2007 is not the familiar .doc and .xls. The version of Documents-to-Go that came bundled with your device will not open them. For that function, you need to upgrade to Documents-to-Go 10. The upgrade cost is around $30 and can be done on-line.
Office Depot has through May 19 an Acer 22" wide-screen LCD monitor for only $199 after a $70 mail-in rebate. It is model AL-2216Wbd.
If you have a Treo smart phone or other device that uses Secure Digital (SD) flash memory cards, head to Circuit Ciy this week for a deal on a PNY 2 GB SD card or only $24.99. Circuit City also has a Verge leather notebook case for $9.99 after a $20 mail-in rebate. Also, with the storm seasn upon us, you will want to protect all of your PC's and peripherals with a surge protector and uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Circuit City has a compact APC UPS for $39.99 after a $20 mail-in rebate.
Here is an interesting story about a law firm in Scotland that implemented Postini email filtering after being bombarded with spam email messages in a denial-of-service attack on their email server. Postini filters all mail before it reaches the law firm, dramatically reducing the chance of being affected by further attacks.
