Law Office Tech Deals for Week of June 22

As summer travel season hits (assuming you can afford to travel by car with $4 plus per gallon gas), there are many good deals on portable GPS navigation devices.  One of the best budget-priced GPS devices, the TomTom One, is on sale at Office Depot for $129 after a $50 mail-in rebate.  TomTom GPS devices usually get high ratings for their easy-to-use interface and free map updates.  Another well-reviewed budget GPS is the Mio Moov 200 on sale at Kmart for $129.99.  If you want to take a step up to a widescreen GPS device, the Garmin Nuvi 200W is on sale at Office Depot for $199.99.  All of these units have on-screen and spoken word turn-by-turn directions.

If you are an AT&T wireless customer or willing to switch, you can get a great deal on one of the most compact smart phones on the market, and one likely to sync with your practice management or time/billing software.  The Palm Centro is just $29.99 at your local Radio Shack store with a two-year AT&T cellular contract. 

I love Skype's voice over Internet protocol telephone (VoIP) service.  The basic (computer to computer) service is free, but you can add the ability to make unlimited calls to any regular or cell phone in the U.S. and Canada for just $2.95 per month.  Go world-wide for only $9.95 per month.  If you have an international practice or clients who travel abroad, this is a bargain.  If you install Skype on your notebook PC, you can make free calls anywhere you can find a Wi-Fi connection and save your cell minutes.  Skype is much more pleasant to use when you wear a computer headset with built-in microphone.  I use the Radio Shack Gigaware VoIP USB Headset.  It is half-price at $14.99 after a $5 discount and a $10 mail-in prepaid card that can be used anywhere that credit cards are accepted.  It comes with the Skype software on a mini-CD.  On-line reviews of the headset have been mixed, but it works very well for me, and the price is hard to beat.