Affinity Law Office Technology Blog

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. 

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.   

Bypass Vista and Wait for Windows 7?

Rumors are all of the Internet that Microsoft has placed its next operating system, Windows 7, on a fast-track for release during the second half of next year (2009).  This may be based on the perception that Vista is, if not a failure, at least not a huge improvement over XP.  There seems to be a consensus that it runs perhaps 10% slower than XP on the same hardware, even with the advanced graphical features disabled.  That could change when Vista's Service Pack 1 is released in the very near future.

There is also evidence, at least based on Dell's production, that small business customers continue to choose XP over Vista by a better than 2 to 1 margin.  My own new notebook PC came with XP Pro, not Vista, so I clearly fall into that small-business majority.  However, the vast majority of consumer-grade machines (such as my son's new desktop PC) are being purchased with Vista.  Microsoft is allowing computer manufacturers to continue offering XP as an option on new computers through June 30, 2008.

If Microsoft's next operating system is less than two years away, and with no compelling reason for small business users such as law firms to leave XP, is Vista merely a stop-gap OS like the much-maligned Windows ME?   

Solution to Vista speed problem on horizon?

Microsoft has released a public preview of Service Pack 1 for the Windows Vista operating system.  Because it is only a Release Candidate (RC), not a finished product, it should be approached with caution as it may not perform as expected on all systems.  But those who have installed it find that Vista is noticeably zippier.  The officially named Windows Vista Service Pack 1 RC Refresh is available here. 

Best MS Office Alternatives

PCMag.com has a comprehensive look at the best alternatives to Microsoft Office.  The roundup includes both desktop office suites and on-line office suite services.  The on-line Google Docs service scored the Editor's Choice award in this roundup.  Take a close look here and find an alternative (many of which are free) to MS Office.

AOL partners with McAfee to offer free antivirus software

For a short while last year and early this year, AOL partnered with Kaspersky to offer an excellent free anti-virus program.  For whatever reason, that partnership was discontinued. 

But AOL has forged a new alliance with McAfee and is now offering a special edition of McAfee VirusScan Plus at no charge.  You are required to sign-up for an AOL screen name (email address), which is free.  This offering includes anti-virus software, spyware protection, and a software firewall. 

XP hangs tough

Although Windows Vista has been around for over half a year, its toughest competition may be coming from its predecessor, Windows XP.  It is nearly impossible to buy a new computer at retail with XP installed, but it remains possible to order an XP machine from most major computer vendors.  Sales of XP to consumers will end in January.  Sales to businesses will continue until January of 2009.  It is a good bet that the pace of migration to Vista will accelerate considerably once Vista SP1 is released near the end of the first quarter of 2008.   

Commenting on PDF's without Acrobat

You need the full-version of Adobe Acrobat, not just the free Acrobat Reader, to edit, mark-up, or comment on PDF files.  There are good reasons to have the full version of Acrobat, but you may not need it on all of your firm's PC's, or may not be able to afford the expense for every computer.  But there is a free alternative that, although it can't create PDF's, will let you mark them up in a variety of ways.  Download PDF-Xchange Viewer to be able to highlight, circle, add sticky notes, and otherwise comment on existing PDF files without the full version of Acrobat.

This is important for law firms.  We've cautioned against sending editable word processing files (Word, WordPerfect, etc.) via email to clients, co-counsel, and opposing counsel (at least without appropriate security precautions) for fear that unauthorized changes could be made to those documents.  Instead, send them as PDF's.

But if you send them as PDF's, does that mean the recipient (or you if you are the recipient) must go "low tech" and print out the PDF, hand-mark changes and comments, and then scan and send it back to the author (or, worse yet, fax it back)?  With PDF-Xchange Viewer, you can do all of your commenting on-screen, save some trees, and stay high tech. 

   

Windows on a Mac?

Yes, it is possible.  Why would you want to do it?  Maybe you prefer the Mac for your art or music production hobby or side business at home, but you still want to run Windows applications needed for your law practice.  Or maybe you just want the best of two worlds (we can't say "both" worlds because Linux may also become an attractive law office choice in a Web 2.0 world). 

When Apple switched to Intel-based machines, that opened the door to run Windows XP or Vista on Mac hardware.  Apple offers its Boot Camp utility, but a better overall choice may be Parallels Desktop for Mac 3.0.  You can run the Mac OS X and Windows XP or Vista simultaneously, even dragging and dropping files between Windows and Mac folders.  Although not a free download like Boot Camp, Parallels is not unreasonable at $80 and there is a 15-day free trial. 

Word macro makes "paste special" easy

It is not unusual for lawyers and law firm staff to compile new documents from bits and pieces of existing documents or even web pages (such as quoting text from web pages, etc.).  The problem with doing this in MS Word is that the standard Copy and Paste commands bring the formatting of the original document along with the text. 

Savvy users know that the Paste Special option allows them to strip the formatting and paste plain text into the document.  The added plain text will adopt the formatting of the target document, avoiding the need to go back and clean-up formatting inconsistencies.

If you've tried to write a macro to automate the process of pasting plain or unformatted text into a Word document, you know that Word 2003 changes your macro to the standard Paste Default command and brings in the old formatting anyway.  This can be fixed by editing the finished macro to specify that plain text be used instead.

Here are the steps:

1. Open a MS Word document, select some text, and press Control-C to copy it
2. On the Word toolbar, click Tools>Macro>Record New Macro
3. In the Macros dialog box, type PastePlain
4. Click the Keyboard button to open the Customize Keyboard dialog box
5. Verify that the Save destination in the drop-down list is your Normal.dot template (it should be by default)
6. Click in the Press new shortcut key box and type Control-V (or any other key combination, but this will substitute Paste Plain Text for the standard Paste command, which is what you will want most of the time)
7. Click the Assign button, then the Close button
8. When the small cassette-like icon appears on screen, go to the Word toolbar and select Edit>Paste Special and double-click on the Unformatted Text option
9. Click the square stop recording button on the cassette icon to finish recording your macro

Unfortunately, Word has translated these steps into the following macro command:

Selection.PasteAndFormat  (wdPasteDefault)

This command will simply paste formatted text like the standard Paste command.  You need to select Tools>Macro>Macros from the Word toolbar.  Find and select your PastePlain macro in the list.  Click the Edit button.  Just change "wdPasteDefault" to "wdFormatPlainText".  Then press Alt-Q to save the changes and exit the macro editor.  Now your PastePlain macro should work properly whenever you hit Alt-V.  On the rare occasions when you want to preserve the original formatting of the copied text, just use the standard Paste command in Word's Edit toolbar.