The Law of Printers

There can be few things more frustrating in life than working with computer printers.  They’re hungry, unpredictable and unreasonable beasts – right from setting up and first use. 

And sod’s law being what it is, the problems always strike in their most severe form when you absolutely need to print that document on a very tight deadline.  I remember as a law student, I had some uncomfortably close shaves involving my old HP Officejet and getting assignments submitted for marking.  They were very  much “do or die” moments.

Wisely, I abandoned inkjet printers two years ago now (and have avoided Epson printers like the plague since my first inkjet in 1999). 

Still, for anyone still suffering with them, I think this picture sums up your likely experience very nicely.  ;-)

Found here.

Happy printing! 

Multi Monitor Mayhem

From Future Lawyer 19/04/11:

I don't use dual monitors. I am not conflicted about work and play. When I play, I don't hide it. You don't really need dual monitors. You know you don't.

Hmm. I’m not totally convinced it’s as simple as that. There are genuine advantages to a multiple monitor set-up and it doesn’t necessarily follow that one monitor has to be for work and one for play. Still, YMMV.

I have a bit of a love-hate thing as far as dual monitors are concerned; I’ve used an additional monitor at times with my laptop but I’ve consciously avoided going double (or even triple) with my desktop.  I have plenty of space on my desk but I want it to stay that way, and I’m conscious just how much would be taken up by more than one monitor.  I also spend a lot of time moving between computers, so it’s probably as well that I don’t get too cosy with a multiple monitor setup.

I think dual monitors are a genuine advantage for some types of work, but there’s a key trade off with space which I’m just not willing to pay – at least at home. The distraction factor is an issue too; if you can park your mainstream work on your your main monitor, it’s easier to convince yourself you’re still working whilst you switch over to the secondary ‘recreational’ stuff on the other.  And that can play havoc with one’s productivity!

Believe me, I have a hard enough time staying focussed as it is. 

From what I recall, I’ve found more than one monitor useful when comparing different drafts of contracts side by side for instance, and for cross-checking information from two different sources without having to flick between windows.  Plus, it’s also really nice to have the ‘extra elbow’ room whilst working generally.

Still, whenever I’ve used multiple monitors, I can’t really say that it caused my productivity to skyrocket, though I don’t know if that’s a good or bad reflection on my usual working practice.

Are any members of the ‘sphere out there harbouring any strong feelings (positive or otherwise) about multiple monitors? 

Laptops and toasted skin syndrome: a few thoughts

From The Metro 04/10/10:

An unusual skin condition which once afflicted bakers and glass-blowers has made a comeback. Except this time it’s affecting laptop users.

'Toasted skin syndrome’ which is caused by long-term heat exposure, is affecting people who use a laptop on their knees.

It is generally harmless but can cause permanent skin darkening, and in rare cases is can lead to cancer, Swiss researchers warned.

In one case, a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discolouration on his thigh after playing computer games for a few hours every day for several months.

In another case a US law student developed the condition after spending about six hours a day working with her computer propped on her lap.

The temperature underneath the machine registered 52C (125F)

This story has been widely reported over the past week and I first encountered it in the trusty Metro.  It’s good to see the law student putting in the hours but there are a couple of things which I still don’t quite ‘get’. 

Firstly, why was she spending 6 hours a day with her laptop on her lap?  What’s wrong with a desk?  Kitchen table?  The law library?  I know we all have different ways of working, but being perched on a sofa with a laptop balanced on your lap surrounded by books, papers and other studenty stuff doesn’t strike me as a very efficient way of working.  It can’t be doing her posture any good either.

Secondly, if she’s absolutely got to use it on her lap, how about getting a laptop tray. Although I switch between my desktop PC and laptop frequently, I’ve always felt it necessary to keep the fan intakes clear at the bottom – particularly when using a laptop in bed.  I used to use the lid of a large plastic storage container until I discovered the Belkin range of Cush-Desks.  I’ve been using one for several months now and rate them very highly.

Most product manuals specify that laptops can get hot and warn users to avoid prolonged use of laptops against bare skin – precisely because of the risk of burns.  But you can’t always protect people from themselves.  After all, didn’t she sense it was slowly cooking her legs?  Or was it analogous to a frog in boiling water not noticing the slowly increasing temperature? Maybe she should have put a thicker pair of trousers on. 

No matter what, it’s tough to have much sympathy here.

Browser Extensions (not necessarily legally related)

I’ve made a conscious effort to streamline the number of browser extensions I use of late, getting rid of the trash and keeping just the stuff I really need.  I've always been slightly wary of too many extensions for their unpleasant tendency to absolutely trash the performance of your browser - in a ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ kind of way.

So, what extensions do I use regularly ?

Adblock - gets installed immediately with any fresh installation of Firefox & Chrome and is absolutely essential to happy and carefree web browsing.  You only realise its true value when you suddenly don't have it (such as when using a friend or relative's PC and have to suffer trawling through web pages which are cluttered with ungainly ads). 

Smooth Scroll for Chrome (I’m sure there’s an equivalent for Firefox).  It's a kind of, 'what it says on the tin' kind of add-on!

Firebug - fantastic app used for tinkering with web design, allowing you to try out changes 'on the fly'.  The lite version for Chrome is pretty useless but the Firefox version is superb.

LastPass – A fantastically useful add-on for managing passwords and completing forms.

Dictionary Lookup for Chrome – Double clicking on a word whilst holding down Ctrl brings up a definition with no further steps, clicks or mouse movements.

Feedly - a quirky alternative to Google Reader, it's a much better (and more attractive) means of finding and exploring content, but maybe not always as great for whizzing through as many subscriptions as possible to clear the backlog whilst keeping an eye out for interesting content. 

I used to use Aardvark a few years ago  to remove unnecessary elements from a page before printing and have recently discovered the Aardvark bookmarklet which works on any browser and works great.  I found it useful for removing tell-tale elements from the BBC’s live commentary feeds for World Cup matches (and F1 free practice sessions) whilst at work.

In the past, I've tried xmarks to keep my bookmarks in sync across the various computers I use but found it to be problematic and despite constant tinkering and reinstalls, never fully resolved the problems.  Knowing that I use Google Chrome 99% of the time - and knowing how damn well the built-in bookmark synchronization works - I've reverted back to that.  

For what it's worth, I've tried a whole bunch of extensions over the past few years (who hasn't?) but most of them don't last long. They range from highlighting gizmos, scrapbooking stuff, so-called Gmail enhancements, to bibliography-enhancing add-ons for university work - you name it.    The extension ecosystems for both Firefox and Chrome have grown astronomically and it seems there's an extension for just about anything. 

Probably the worst example of extension gluttony, though, is 'nothing' from Chrome.   Yeah, my self-respect for humanity dropped a notch, too, when I realised it does exactly what it says.

Worryingly, it's got great reviews:

If there are any killer add-ons out there you think would enrich my life, go ahead and feel free to shout out about them. 

Don’t ya just hate it when…

I don’t listen to music or podcasts at work (obviously) but I do quite often outside of work when I’m tinkering away on my ‘puter.  And yes, this has happened to me a few times over the years – though I’m not distracted by cats, thank God.

Found via Digg (as ever)!

Windows 7 Battery Woes Completely Disproved

From Paul Thurrott (SuperSite for Windows) 09/02/10:

Microsoft on Monday issued a lengthy statement about the recent Windows 7 battery controversy, echoing my assessment from earlier in the day but backing it up with cold, hard evidence. Put simply, Windows 7 is not responsible for any battery life issues that customers have reported via its support forums.

"Windows 7 is correctly warning [about] batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state," Microsoft president Steven Sinofsky wrote in the Engineering Windows 7 Blog. "We are seeing nothing more than the normal course of battery degradation over time ... In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement."

I can’t say I’ve noticed any negative effects with using Windows 7 on a laptop (that previously ran XP) battery-related or otherwise. I’m still rather in awe of the fact I’ve successfully installed Windows 7 on my 5 year old Sony Vaio laptop and seems to run it as well as it well as it did XP.  I run Windows 7 across all of my PCs now and have absolutely no complaints.  On my laptop, the battery life certainly seems comparable with what I was getting under XP.

That this story grew so big in the first place is a testimony to people’s naiveté coupled with a truck-load of scaremongering.

Office 2010 Beta

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been trying out the public beta of the next version of Microsoft Office, just as I did back in summer 2006 for the second beta of what was to be Office 2007. So far my experiences are positive, but this isn’t the quantum leap (from the perspective of UI and, to a certain extent, functionality) as Office 2007 proved over  its predecessors.

I’m not going to run through all of the new stuff in there; I just intend commenting on the new features that I’ve encountered or those which I have particular opinions of - based on my (rather limited) experience with the beta.

I should point out at this stage, I guess, that as Office has matured over the years, certain additions have just felt like change for change’s sake. I get that feeling with Office 2010 – possibly more than ever.

· Pretty new icons for each application and a nice new orange Office logo. Still, I’m not sure how much your average Office user will care about this stuff.

· Stronger colour ‘branding’ for each of the apps; but was identifying between them ever a really issue?

· Much better in-program navigation – the search functionality is superb and surpasses Firefox’s inline search which not only searches as you type but also offers excellent file-wide navigation at the same time in the navigation pane.

· Multiple-paste options much improved – fantastic!

· Task panes are smarter, clearer and offer more context-sensitive options.

· Excel is meant to have got a bunch more functionality. Still, the elementary stuff I do in spread sheets could be done with Office 97 or even earlier.  So it’s a bit of a non-event for me.

· I very much like the improved UI provided the silver theme is turned on. The gradient looks fantastic when the Window isn’t maximised; when it is maximised in Visa, XP, (but not Windows 7) however, the effect is lost but it’s still less in-your-face than the more gaudy Office 2007 themes.

The black theme looked awful in both 2007 and the 2010 beta, but the standard blue theme in the 2010 version, just looks horribly washed-out and lifeless.  The default blue theme of the 2007 version was much more attractive.

· Right click menus in Word are narrower, more streamlined and offer more helpful context-sensitive options than ever before.

· The ‘backstage’ screen accessed via the coloured ‘file’ tab in each of the apps might be seen as slightly retrogressive from a UI standpoint – does it really need to cover the entire workable space?

· Big improvement with Outlook. Shame the Google Calendar sync gizmo isn’t working with it yet which I rely on heavily. I’m told that a registry hack does the trick but this post is about documenting my ‘out of the box’ experience.

· Program Reliability – solid as a rock – touch wood.

· OneNote better than ever, particularly with the ribbon interface.

· The Word 2007 bug which makes text render incorrectly giving the impression of duplication until you scroll and it disappears has seemingly been fixed. I know this isn’t a confliction with a specific video driver as I’ve run across the exact same thing on around 6 or 7 machines all running Office 2007. So far, so good in Office 2010.

· Send a smile / send a frown - (the means of providing direct and immediate feedback to Microsoft about things users like and dislike about the beta) ironically is the only patch of buginess I’ve ran into so far.

There’s no doubt about it, there’s a lot of good stuff in Office 2010. Still, I’m not sure how much of a compelling upgrade it makes – particularly if you’re running Office 2007. I guess the conservative, softly-softly approach practiced by the Windows 7 team under Steven Sinofsky’s leadership, which favoured small incremental improvements and fine-tuning over quantum leaps, has filtered down to the Office team too. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; just don’t expect to be blown away by the next version of the world’s favourite office productivity suite.

Open Source Law Student - Part 1

For all that I talked up this experiment in the latter part of last year, I realise I’ve been ominously quiet on it since. The plan, for those that don’t remember, was to try and do (at least a phase of, anyway) my LL.M using only open source and free proprietary software. I’m going to split this write-up into two parts, for the sake of brevity.

Given the explosive uptake of netbooks – an immediate hit with ultra mobile and cash-strapped students – I felt the experiment was particularly timely. That said, although Linux was an obvious first choice for netbook operating systems, the somewhat aged Windows XP thereafter became the number one install choice of OEMs.

But is Linux a viable choice for the average student? Based on this experiment, I would have to say yes – even though the transition might prove a touch bumpy if you’ve been brought up with Windows. What I can safely say, however, is that that transition is the smoothest it’s ever been; it has been an acknowledged trend for some time that Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are, broadly speaking, converging from a user experience standpoint.

And cloud computing, of course, continues to gather steam. As such, then, the whole premise of what an operating system is and what it does is being slowly reconceptualised. Computer users are spending more and more time within web browsers, they are storing content in the cloud – not just locally – and their connectivity to the web across various devices and locations is becoming increasingly seamless.

And with Google Chrome OS on the horizon and also potential options to run Android on netbooks, the scene is set to become even more exciting.

The premise of my experiment was simple: to see if a law student could survive using freely available software to turn in the various assignments and preparation that a degree demands.

During the experiment, I ran a variety of software (and I include web-apps in that term) that an average student would need: a browser, an office suite, email, etc. but I also ran a few more obscure items; all students have slightly broader computing needs than just word processing and email.

I focussed on 3 different distros of Linux: Ubuntu (Hardy Heron and Intrepid Ibex – I’ve not tried Jaunty Jackalope), Opensuse 11 and Linux Mint. Because of my testing the beta and RC of Windows 7 on a separate partition, I ended up running the distros in virtual machines within Windows Vista.

Email: I use and love Google’s Gmail and have used it almost exclusively for 5 years solid now. I don’t use a mail client though I did experiment with Mozilla’s excellent Thunderbird for the purposes of the experiment using the IMAP functionality of Gmail. Gmail also makes it easy to have your mail from other services (such as your Uni account your institution supports this function) redirected so checking your email becomes a one-stop-shop. Why anyone would use a mail client now is beyond me – email in the cloud is just the way God intended it to be, quite frankly. I also used Windows Live Hotmail and although I much prefer Gmail, it’s certainly a viable option.

Browser: All browsers are free today, anyway, but under the cloud computing paradigm, browsers essentially become the operating system so the choice has never been so important.  My first choice was Mozilla Firefox, of course, which I’ve used since early 2004 and which offers certain essential add-ons that I couldn’t be without.  As an alternative to Firefox or IE 8 (the latter of which is a credible alternative to FF albeit without the rich ecosystem of ad-ons) I’ve also found Google Chrome to be excellent and love its Spartan look and feel. I use it almost exclusively on my aging laptop which runs it lightening fast and the minimalist UI works great on a smaller screen. To be fair, though, it does take some getting used to and knowing a few keyboard shortcuts makes a huge difference.

Office Suite: My principal choice was Open Office.  I found it surprisingly easy to make the switch, and although I’ve been using MS Office 2007 for over two years, Open Office’s conventional UI didn’t bug me. Their default page layout did, however. If you’re used to a previous version of MS Office, you should have no problem making the jump to Open Office.   I had no problems with file compatibility for .doc or .rtf files, though there are still problems regarding the native Office 2007 .docx files.  The same also applies for the conventional files types for other programs such as spreadsheets and presentations; compatibility is not an issue.

I also tried Abi word and Google Docs – both of which offer footnote functionality and remain credible alternatives to MS Office. Although many students might look to snag MS Office home and student edition for around £70 – or they may simply receive it as part of a new PC – I see no reason why a law student would need to spend money on an office suite to get work done efficiently.  Free options really are that good these days.

Coming in part 2, calendaring, encryption, games, sticking points and my conclusion.

Stay tuned.

Why (some) Windows 7 usability features are useless (to me)

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:3c4e45e3-53e3-4a80-a305-f9a41937a6bd&amp;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Doing Homework in Windows 7">Video: Doing Homework in Windows 7</a>

As a follow up to yesterday’s Windows 7 for Law Students, I thought I’d post a video I found entitled ‘Doing Homework in Windows 7’ designed to showcase time-saving tips and features in Windows 7 for students to be more productive. At least that’s the theory.

Now, I realise we all have different ways of working but I have to say, for me, many of the so-called advances in Windows 7 designed to improve workflow, clarity of content and ease of use would be worthless to me.

When I’m working, I like to have windows maximised to make best use of my widescreen display. That’s one of the chief reasons why I’ve found the sidebar in Vista (essentially now gadgets in 7) to be such a flop which I ended up disabling long ago. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way: I’ve got a big screen so I want to make use of it. Why the heck would I open piddling little windows which obscure much of the content when I could see so much more at a glance and wouldn’t have to shuffle those little windows about like I’m playing solitaire?

The demonstration illustrates aero snap whereby 2 windows are docked at opposite ends of the screen. Nice feature, perhaps, but how useful is this in practice?

Using this feature, the user is left with using a ridiculous pair of narrow windows resembling pillars which would quickly get right on my proverbials. As a result, not only are you scrolling every 5 seconds to move down the page, but you have to scroll horizontally as well to get to the content you need. And this is supposed to make me MORE productive? Go figure.

Please remind me again why is flipping between windows such a big problem – there are even keyboard shortcuts for it? However you do it, switching between windows is surely much more preferable than having to scroll up and down, left and right like you’re a person possessed trying to search for your content in small windows when you can have it all open in front of you in maximised ones?

And what’s the deal with using a minimised window and using a Wikipedia gadget to search for an answer online? With a maximised window and using either a keyboard shortcut or mouse, I could open, say, Firefox (almost certainly open already) and open a new tab with Cntrl + T move the cursor to the built in search box with Cntrl + K and start typing and hit enter. Done. Wikipedia entries are often first in the list of Google results and the added advantage of this method is that I’ve a whole page of other entries within view if I don’t like Wikipedia’s offering without having to do another thing.

So, yeah, I think I’ll give Wikipedia gadgets and similar a wide berth, thanks.

Some of the other so-called tips in the video are pretty esoteric and would represent a long-winded means of working for many people. That said, though, aero peek is an awesome feature and one I found myself using continually; the number I times I go to swipe the ‘show desktop’ button and miss on the Vista taskbar is infuriating.

In short, I’d say Windows 7 does indeed boast a few bona fide productivity enhancements but videos such as these are not only deceptive but detract from the genuine improvements that are present.

Windows 7 for Law Students

Windows 7, the successor to the ill-fated Windows Vista, is barrelling towards completion and is due to be released on 22nd October this year.  Back in January, I first sampled Windows 7 in the form of the public Beta - a release which was greeted with almost exclusively high applause.  Back in January, I didn't play around with Windows 7 for long, however, as I found the experience of relying totally on a beta OS for my LLM computing needs a touch unnerving.

The Release Candidate (RC) for Windows 7 has been out for nearly a couple of months now, but because of exams, travelling and a bunch of other stuff, I haven't had a chance to sample it.  Until recently.

Running Windows 7 has also been my first foray into 64 bit computing, a move prompted in no small part because of the 32 bit versions of Windows inability to address more than 3.4 GB of RAM. So far, the switch has been totally seamless and glitch free - and I'm referring to both Windows 7 and 64 bit computing here.  I've come across 1 piece of software thus far which has thrown a technical wobbly at running in a 64 bit environment but on the whole, it’s been a big success.

Many tech pundits have referred to Windows 7 as ‘Vista done right’ and while that’s a bit of a loaded statement, I guess that sentiment is more or less accurate. Yes, it’s got more in the way of eye candy, yes it’s nimbler, cleaner and more highly polished.  There are a few improvements in respect of UI, search and libraries – as well as security features like ‘bit locker’ and ‘bit locker to go’ being pushed out across all major versions of the OS. But for the average user – and certainly the average law student – you would have to be seriously sick of Vista for those reasons alone to justify the cost of upgrading.

That said, there is a tantalising pre-order deal being offered to UK customers presently in which you can order a full copy of Home Premium of £49.99 (Amazon are offering it for £44.97) so this is possibly one of the best ever deals for Microsoft’s arguably greatest OS release of all time.

There’s no escaping the fact this release has a very ‘Vista 2.0’ feel about it and if you’re familiar with Vista, you should be well at home when using 7. Granted, the new style taskbar takes a bit of getting used to which is designed to operate more in the manner of the Apple OS X dock, but it can simply and easily be altered so that it mimics the behaviour and appearance of the conventional Windows taskbar.  There are a few nifty features - aero peek and so on - but the highly touted multi-touch features require specific hardware.

So would I consider upgrading? Well, I like the sound of a faster OS and would like to enjoy the benefits of my OS addressing all of the RAM I’ve installed. Quite frankly, though, on my beefy desktop machine I can’t say I notice any different in speed between Vista and 7, so that in itself is hardly a reason to upgrade. That said, 7 reportedly runs considerably better than Vista on lower-end hardware such as netbooks and seeing as these have quickly become a student favourite, I can imagine there are many law students out there that will soon be running 7 on a such a machine. (Personally, I can’t stand going below a 14 inch screen so don’t see myself jumping on the netbook bandwagon any time soon).

Search in 7 has been tweaked to improve it from Vista which, let’s remember, was a quantum leap over the laughable search functionality built into XP. Search is undoubtedly one of the true day-to-day benefits I have found with using Vista in the context of a law degree.  XP, out of the box, is woefully inadequate by comparison, though I admit, there are several additional apps out there which you can download to mimic much of the search-goodness found in Vista and 7 today – such as Google Desktop and Windows Search.  For me, Vista’s prowess in respect of search really comes into its own when compiling bibliographies and where I'm completing or cross checking their accuracy; I believe that the instant search functionality in Vista has literally saved me hours and hours of time over of the course of the academic year.  Digging files out in a flash, and the ability to open apps by hitting the windows key, typing a couple of letters and tapping enter also makes Vista's (relatively few in my opinion) flaws worth enduring.

So as a law student, would I upgrade - outside of buying a new computer?  To be honest, I would only do so in the form of the excellent pre-order deal and, as great as 7 is, my experience with Vista has been fine so don’t find myself absolutely itching to upgrade. Nonetheless, I’ll probably go ahead and order myself a copy of Windows 7 – I’m just like that, I guess. If you’ve a fairly modern PC and are still running XP, Windows 7 could breathe a whole new sense of life into your computing experience and bring you right up to the present. Other than that, if you want the latest thing, and have a lower end Vista machine - particularly a laptop or netbook – Windows 7 might also be well worth a look this autumn.

It’s a shame that 7 won’t be released in time for the start of the new academic year.  Although the install process of Windows 7 is smoother and much faster than ever before, installing a new OS on your indispensable computer during term time is not the faint hearted.  If you aren’t sure what you’re doing – don’t even try it.  If you are feeling brave, set aside plenty of time, have lots of backups and be near to a spare machine with internet access would be my advice.   And whatever you do, make sure you’ve printed out that assignment that’s due in the next day before you start tinkering.

Computing for Law Students

I’ve decided to create this segment on Law Actually to run throughout the summer for two reasons. Firstly, I just love this sort of stuff and I’ve been tinkering about with computers for years. I’m also not convinced that there is a whole lot of material out there in the way of computing advice and tips pitched at law students so intend to fill this gap in the market.

Secondly, my time as a law student will soon be over and I see this as the optimal time to pass on my (relatively few) nuggets of wisdom (such as they are) and general experience to all and sundry out there in cyberspace – including a few potential and current law students who hopefully find this stuff interesting and useful.

So here’s the plan: I intend to publish a series of posts, starting first with a general look at Windows 7 which I’ve tinkered about within the context of the public beta and the release candidate over the past few months. From there, I’ll write up my conclusions from my 'Open Source Law Student' project – yes, shock horror, I haven’t forgotten entirely about that. In addition, I will throw out a few shortish blurbs focussing on specific software, tips and time-saving ways of working which I’ve found useful during my law degrees.

Stay tuned.