Affinity Law Office Technology Blog

HP Color LaserJet for $150?

Yes, its true.  This week you can get a genuine HP Color LaserJet for $150 after a $75 Staples Easy Rebate (which really is "easy" - do it all on-line and wait for your check in the mail).  The HP Color LaserJet 1600 isn't especially fast at only 8 ppm for black or color printing, but it is affordable.  This would be a good choice for your office at home with the added bonus of color output.  You can opt for direct network connectivity for only $50 more with the HP Color LaserJet 2600n for just $199.98 after a $100 Staples Easy Rebate. 

Something else to worry about

As if we didn't worry enough about computer viruses coming at us from emails or web sites.  Now we have to be concerned about peripheral devices such as digital photo frames that connect to our PC's via USB.  The Associated Press is reporting on virus-laden digital photo frames being shipped to the U.S. from China that can infect your PC when you connect them via USB cable to transfer your photos to the device.  According to the story:

Recent cases reviewed by The Associated Press include some of the most widely used tech devices: Apple iPods, digital picture frames sold by Target and Best Buy stores and TomTom navigation gear.

In most cases, Chinese factories - where many companies have turned to keep prices low - are the source.

This is yet another excellent reason to use a good anti-virus program and make sure it is always current. 

Vista SP1 faster, but not as fast as XP

Those stuck with...er, using Windows Vista have anxiously awaited the speed-up promised by the release of Vista's Service Pack 1.  While preliminary reports suggest measurable speed increases over the original release of Vista, recent benchmarking of Vista SP1 against Windows XP SP2 shows that XP performs better. 

As concluded by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes in his blog on ZDNet after running a series of benchmark tests on the two operating systems:

Looking at the data there’s only one conclusion that can be drawn - Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows Vista SP1.  End of story.  Out of the fifteen tests carried out, XP SP2 beat Vista SP1 in eleven, Vista SP1 beat XP SP2 in two of the tests, and two of the tests resulted in a draw.

The best result for Vista SP1 was in the single file drive-to-drive copy, while the best result for XP SP2 was extracting multiple files from a compressed folder.  Given these results and taking into account the improvements that SP1 bought to Vista, if I was to go back and compare XP SP2 with Vista RTM, XP would have hammered Vista even harder.

Kingsley-Hughes promised to continue benchmarking Vista and XP to uncover the reasons behind this performance difference. 

In the meantime, a movement of sorts has sprung up to persuade Microsoft not to kill new sales of Windows XP as scheduled on June 30, 2008.  There is an on-line petition where XP users can voice their opinion that XP be kept alive for purchase. 

Long-range Wi-Fi

The wireless adapters built into most notebook PC's will connect to a Wi-Fi network at no more than 100 to 200 feet.  If you want to triple that distance, it is possible with an external USB wireless adapter such as the Hawking Technology Hi-Gain Wireless-300N HWUN1.  Laptop Magazine recently tested this adapter and found that although its speed was not state-of-the-art at close range, it could hold a connection up to 600 feet from a wireless router.  If you need that kind of range, its $89.99 list price is worth it. 

Dirt Cheap Terabyte Storage

A Terabyte (TB)is one thousand Gigabytes (GB).  That is a lot of data storage space for documents, photos, audio, and video.  This week several retailers have 1 TB external USB hard drives on sale for ridiculously low prices. 

Office Depot has the Maxtor 1 TB OT$ Plus external drive on sale for $249.99.  It comes with backup software, one-touch backup functionality, and both USB 2.0 and FireWire connections.

Circuit City has the Western Digital 1 TB My Book World Edition network attached storage (NAS) drive on sale for $269.99.  This drive has a Gigabit Ethernet connection to plug directly into your network.  It is not dependent on a host PC.  Software allows you to connect to and access files on this drive via the Internet when you are away from your home or office.  Circuit also has the above-mentioned Maxtor USB/FireWire drive on sale for $259.99. 

Over at Best Buy, the Western Digital 1 TB My Book Essentials external USB drive is on sale for $229.99. 

Google Calendar now syncs with Outlook

The very nifty web-based Google Calendar just got niftier.  It now syncs with the Microsoft Outlook Calendar on your desktop or notebook PC.  The sync process can be unidirectional (Google to Outlook or Outlook to Google) or bi-directional (changes made to either calendar will be transferred to the other).  In order to enable the sync process, you must download and install Google's sync utility.  Details are available here.  You can also view your Google Calendar and add or modify events from a web-enabled cell phone.   

Smart Power Strips Save Electricity

Sure, they look small.  But the wall wart power adapters we use for many of our electronic peripherals can use a surprising amount of electricity.  This is especially true for tech-oriented lawyers who may have a half-dozen or more wall warts constantly plugged-in at the office, home, or both. 

You could unplug these critters when not in use, but they often reside behind desks or cabinets, or in other hard-to-reach spots.  Some energy-savers connect all of their wall warts to a power strip with an on-off switch.  But then you need to remember to turn the switch off when you don't need to power or charge the gadgets connected to the wall warts. 

Now there are power strips and surge protectors that will automatically power-down wall warts when your computer is turned off.  These devices sense the power load drawn from the "main" outlet.  When that load is off or minimal, such as when your computer is turned-off, it will also cut power the the secondary outlets into which your wall warts or other peripherals are plugged. 

Smart surge protectors don't cost much more than the conventional type.  An affordable version is available for $15 at the tech geek wonderland known as Cyberguys.