Scanners are becoming a part of every law office’s equipment, but finding the right scanner to fit your needs can often be difficult and confusing. For smaller offices, the first foray into the world of dedicated scanners is usually a small desktop or workgroup scanner such as models from Fujitsu  or from Visionner in the $400 to $600 price range and are dedicated sheet fed scanners. Ideally, any scanner that you add to your office should be able to output scanned files to PDF format. The better scanners in this category usually also include software for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and some type of image organization software such as PaperPort from Nuance.  

PCMagazine on its PCMag.com website has published Dynamite Desktop Document Scanners comparing several leading desktop document scanners. This article provides a review of each scanner as well as a comparison chart comparing all of them. It should be pointed out that Fujtisu has released the ScanSnap S510 which is a newer model than the model reviewed.

The article also does an adequate job of detailing some of the differences between the different methods of duplex scanning as well as other features that set these dedicated document scanners apart from your average photo scanner.

One major issue to be aware of is that the ScanSnap does not include a TWAIN driver. What is TWAIN? According to Sue Chastain from About.com “Twain is the interface standard for Windows and Macintosh that allows imaging hardware devices (such as scanners and digital cameras) to communicate with image processing software.” This means that you can’t control the ScanSnap from any other software other than its own, which scans directly into Adobe Acrobat. However, since it does scan directly into Acrobat, this is not as large of a negative as it could be. Furthermore, some popular legal software programs such as Time Matters places a Save to TimeMatters button directly in Adobe so you can save directly to TimeMatters.

Fujitsu personnel that I’ve spoken with state that by not including a TWAIN driver Fujitsu is able to keep the cost of the ScanSnap lower. Another thing not to overlook is the fact that Fujitsi almost always has a $50.00 off coupon for the ScanSnap making the final cost of the ScanSnap around $375.00. With the entrance of the Xerox Documate 152 and its doppelgänger, the Visioneer Patriot 430, you can get a scanner in this class that includes a TWAIN driver for around $150 more than the ScanSnap.

The Fujitsu fi-5120c compares favorably with both the Canon DR-2580 and the Documate 262 and is the scanner that sits on my desktop at work. While about twice the price of the ScanSnap, it is designed for a higher duty cycle and includes a TWAIN drive as well as Ultrasonic double feed detection and other features. 

If you are thinking of starting to scan documents in your office to improve your practice management, then you need to seriously consider a dedicated document scanner like those mentioned above.

Here’s an interesting article Ten Golden Rules to Make Your New Client Happy from the ABA Law Practice Management Section that has some good advice that’s easily followed. When you’ve read that one, check out Low Cost, High Impact Strategies to Market Your Law Practice – Even If You Only Have Five Minutes! That recognizes that most new business comes from existing clients. These are both worth the 5 minutes it will take to read them.

From the folks who bring you InformationWeek comes bMighty.com, a website focused on the IT needs of small and midsize business. Since I’m always on the lookout for useful technology sites, I checked out bMighty.com when I received the announcement that it been launched.  The primary question that I always face when exploring these websites is will there be any useful information for lawyers on this new site? I’m happy to report that for bMighty.com, the answer appears to be yes.

 With sections on tech news, reviews, storage and other technology information, I read through several articles and came across Put Your USB Drive To Work: 5 Strategies For Going Mobile : the post provides information on a number of very useful tips for using your USB thumb drive to help improve your mobility. Authored by Serdar Yegulalp of InformationWeek, the article focuses on five ways to use your USB thumb drive to improve your mobility. According to Yegulalp:

The article provides concrete examples that are actually useful and then provide the links to the utilities mentioned. I especially like the section on using TrueCrypt,to encrypt and protect that confidential information that you may have stored on.

This post is definitely worth saving as it contains using their USB thumb drives to increase their mobility and efficiency.

This post has nothing to do with technology, practice management or the law, this post is purely personal in memory of September 11, 2001.

Today is the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Flight 93. I've been to the Remembrance Chapel at the Pentagon, built where the plane impacted, and talked to service members who were there that day and survived. I served in the armed forces for almost 13 years and know first hand the dedication and willingness to sacrifice that all of our brave men and women of the armed forces share. I consider my self lucky to be living in the USA and found this tribute to our country and its citizens which I thought was appropriate for today. Click the picture which will start the download process of AMERICANTRIBUTE.exe (or click this link). The file is a .exe and you can either run it or save it to your desktop and run is (it will self play when it's double clicked).

Enjoy.

According to PC Magazine.com, Palm has canceled the Foleo. You can read the article here. All I can think of at this moment is thank goodness: Palm has managed to avoid launching a product that was literally a day late and a dollar short.

When Palm announced its Foleo mini notebook earlier this year to a great deal of fanfare publicity, many of us really wondered who was going to use this device. Touted as a replacement for many users notebook computers, the Foleo was intended to be a lightweight replacement for those that needed basic word processing and e-mail access on the go.  Ever since the product was announced, it seemed like a never ending line of pundits were questioning who would be using this device and how effective it would actually be?

At LinuxWorld 2007 in San Francisco last month, Palm had a large booth showcasing the Foleo in all its glory.  I have to admit that the form factor and weight were very nice; however, when you started asking questions and looking at its feature set, to me, the Foleo fell far short of the mark.

Equipped with 802.11b Wi-Fi access, limited memory and programs, quite honestly, the Foleo represented old technology as far as I could tell.  When I questioned one of the Palm staffers in the booth about why the unit did not have at least 802.11g ., I was told "802.11b is the most widely deployed standard today." Excuse me?  Technology that has been out of date for more than two years is what you're going to bank the success of this new product on? 

Even with the hundred dollar discount that was to be provided at the time of the product launch, the Foleo would still cost $499, which is a significant amount of the purchase price of a low end notebook computer with a full feature set.  Apparently, the folks at Palm must've finally gotten the message that the Foleo was potentially a disaster. You can read CEO Ed Colligan's letter explaining this decision here.

I've been a Palm partisan for many years touting the benefits of using its products and remember when Palm was the cutting edge in handheld technology.  Unfortunately, those days seem to be passed.  While other manufacturers bring out new smart phones and convergence devices using the Windows mobile operating platform that are sleeker and continue to add features and usability, it seems that Palm continues to trudge along lacking both vision and innovation.  I'm afraid that we may be seeing the end of an era and that without serious efforts by Palm, the company and its products will become nothing more than a footnote in computer history.