Category: Document Management
Lawyer’s Kindle Gets Better Screen, Huge Price Drop (Updated)
Posted by Scott Bassett in Document Management, Don't Miss This!, Good Deals, Hardware, Mobility, Other Stuff..., PDF Thursday, 1 July 2010 06:16 No Comments
The large-screen Amazon Kindle DX has the been the ebook reader for choice for lawyers to use in their practices. It’s larger screen, higher-capacity storage, long battery life, and native PDF compatibility gave it an edge over other ebook readers. Then Apple released the iPad earlier this year. The iPad is not an ebook reader per se, although it can be used for that purpose. But it is really a slate computer that has too many compromises to make it an ideal ebook reader, such as a backlit screen instead of e-ink and much shorter battery life. Despite these shortcomings as an ebook reader, the iPad is a very cool device in other ways. However, if you don’t already have an iPad, and your are interested in a slate computer as an alternative to a notebook or netbook, you may want to wait for the release later this year of Cisco’s business-oriented Cius slate (aka tablet) computer that will run the Android operating system.
Apple’s iPad sparked a price war among traditional e-ink based ebook readers such as the Kindle. Last week Amazon dropped the price on its standard-sized Kindle to just $189, making it a true bargain. Even better, today only (July 1), you can buy a Kindle for only $150 (plus $5 shipping) on the Woot web site. Woot is now owned by Amazon.
Well the price war has finally hit the “lawyer’s Kindle” - the larger DX model. Amazon dropped the price by $110 to $379, making it substantially cheaper than the cheapest iPad. Of course, that is an apples and oranges comparison anyway, but if what you really want and need is an ebook reader, this price drop makes your decision much easier. Not only did the price drop, but Amazon now offers the DX in a more “lawyerly” graphite gray color and improved the contrast of its e-ink screen by 50% so it will be easier to read and display graphics (in gray-scale, of course) more realistically. How can a lawyer use the DX in his/her practice? Read our earlier blog post here. Now the original Kindle DX (which I have owned and used in my appellate practice since its release over a year ago) can be purchased refurbished from Amazon for $249.99. It has the standard warranty and Amazon’s regular 30-day return policy.
Also big news on the Kindle front is the release of a Kindle app for the Android operating system. Those of you with a Kindle account and an Android cell phone have not, until now, been able to read your book purchases on the high-res screens on your phones. Now you can. I installed the new (free) Android Kindle app on my Motorola Droid. It works very well. I have access to all of my ebooks and they are quire readable on the bright and crisp Droid screen. That will probably get better once I receive my pre-ordered Droid X with an even larger screen in mid-July.
Free PDF Reader Has Extra Features Lawyers Will Find Useful
Recently I wrote of the benefits of upgrading from Adobe Acrobat Standard to Acrobat Professional for the features that are useful in the law office, such as batch OCR processing. The upgrade is $160 (or less) very well spent. You should have at least one copy of Acrobat Professional in your office.
However, you may not need Acrobat Professional on every computer in your office (or on your travel notebook/netbook or home PC). Indeed, depending on how you use your PC, you may not need the Standard version of Acrobat either. There are alternatives that let you read and create PDF documents. Some of those alternatives are free. A few offer nice features for legal users.
One example recently featured in the always-interesting Lifehacker blog is the free version of Nitro PDF Reader. Unlike more basic free PDF readers and creators, Nitro has a full range of features that allow you to add annotations to PDF files (excellent for taking notes on transcripts, briefs, or documents you are reviewing), markup text (for marking necessary changes to draft documents), and fill-in PDF forms (becoming increasing common on court web sites). You can also scan your signature and sign PDF documents, saving the need to print a paper copy solely for the purpose of signing it, then rescanning it for transmittal via email attachment. Beyond viewing and annotating, Nitro includes a PDF print driver that lets you create PDF files from almost any Windows application. I particularly like the ability to drag any file and drop it onto the Nitro desktop icon to create a PDF file.
Perhaps what truly sets Nitro PDF Reader apart from other free PDF viewing and creation tools is its use of a ribbon interface similar to Microsoft Office 2007. If you have become familiar with using Word 2007, using Nitro PDF Reader has the same look and feel. I installed it on one of my computers that also has Adobe Acrobat Standard. Although there are some things Acrobat can do that Nitro PDF can’t, such as create bookmarks in PDF files, I like the simple uncluttered interface of Nitro better than Acrobat and will probably use it instead of Acrobat when I don’t need full Acrobat functionality. For example, as an appellate lawyer, I often take notes and incorporate those directly into the PDF document when reading trial transcripts or reviewing documents that make up the trial court record. Nitro PDF seems easier to use for that purpose.
Nitro PDF Reader is not a complete substitute for Adobe Acrobat, particularly the essential Professional edition of that application. But as a PDF tool on a secondary, home, or travel computer, it is worth serious consideration for the added features lawyers and law office staff will find useful.
Batch OCR – A Great Reason to Choose Acrobat Professional Instead of Standard
Posted by Scott Bassett in Adobe Acrobat, Document Management, PDF Wednesday, 26 May 2010 06:32 No Comments
When you scan a document, chances are the resultant PDF file is merely an image of the original document without a searchable OCR layer. PDF images are not nearly as useful to a law practice as are searchable PDFs. While many scanning applications can automatically convert PDF images to searchable PDFs as part of the scanning process, doing so can slow the process to a crawl. Anything that slows the scanning process will make you or your staff less likely to scan everything that comes into the office. Discouraging scanning is the last thing you want to do.
One answer is to buy or upgrade your version of Adobe Acrobat from Standard to Professional. Standard does a great job of applying OCR to PDF images and turning them into searchable PDFs. But it does so one document at a time. If you need to convert a whole folder worth of documents, the process is tedious and time consuming. But Acrobat Professional allows batch processing of a large number (potentially hundreds) of documents at a time. For this feature alone, the upgrade from Standard to Professional is worth the price (typically in the $160 range per license). There are also other benefits relating to the creation of forms, redacting functions, document comparison capabilities, etc. Although a bit out-of-date, this blog post from Acrobat for Life Sciences details the steps to set up batch conversion of PDF images to searchable PDFs. There is a similar post from the ABA.
Of course, batch OCR processing of multiple files is memory and processor intensive, so you will want to do this on a spare computer or at times when you are not using your computer for other functions. I know a tech-oriented appellate specialist in Detroit who gets extra duty out of his inexpensive Intel Atom-powered netbook by using it for scanning and batch OCR while at the office, then unplugs it from the office network and takes it on the road while traveling. That’s squeezing great value out of a sub-$400 computer. Since learning of this idea, I’ve also done it with great success using my Toshiba NB205 netbook and an old spare copy of Acrobat 6 Professional I had in my junk drawer. You don’t even need to leave your desk to do this because you can use any of several methods (Windows Remote Desktop via Live Mesh if the netbook has XP Home, LogMeIn, VNC, GoToMyPC, etc.) to remote into the netbook (or any spare computer) from your primary PC to open Acrobat and trigger the batch OCR process. As a Live Mesh user, I typically use Remote Desktop for this purpose.
