As most everyone knows I work from home and I work in collaboration with other attorneys online. I do not have any staff much less an IT person. And, I am not a techie myself.
So, how do I survive?
First and foremost all I do and all I have ever done as a home office attorney is look for cheap and easy, and often online, solutions to my needs. It does not have to be complicated. You see how you work, or how you need to improve on what you do, and then look online for the things that can make life better. What will respond to your needs, or at least most of your needs cheaply and effectively.
And then, I am a blog reader. I always read futurelawyer.com because Rick Georges approaches these things from a practical basis. But, there are also other great sites as well.
If there are little gaps in understanding of how to make things work, I admit that I am a little slow, and I will reasonably reach out to others for help in making me see the light. Lawyers, by the way, are generally good at answering these questions.
But second, if I cannot figure it out easily enough, or if what I am using ceases to work or work the way I need it, I chunk it and I do not think twice about it. It is in the trash. That is good for me, and it is good for the marketplace for the reason that tech has to be user friendly. It has to work for dumb nuts like me. It has to work properly with other applications. If it does not, then the tech does not deserve to survive in the marketplace. Cumulatively trashing it, and not using software that does not work or properly meet your needs is the only way to communicate to companies that they do not have it right. Most software and hardware providers fail because they do not read the tea leaves.
It helps if you do not spend any great money on tech. I generally do not. Maybe the exception is certain basic types of hardware such as my laptop or my new DROID. But, even then, I shop, shop, shop (online usually) for the best deal. I shopped around recently, for example, for a cheaper price for Windows 7.
Just today I downloaded and started using Google's Chrome browser. I like it. It is FREE. I like FREE. It is pretty sophisticated and it has a minimal design, which I like. It is fast both in terms of loading pages and my web applications seem to run faster as well.
Chrome is a perfect example of what I am talking about. It seems like I have always used Firefox, in that I gave up, as most people have, on Explorer a long time ago. And, Firefox has always worked well for me. Recently, however, it has become buggy, and it seems as if each new update screws with my computer system. For the last month or so FireFox keeps crashing. I have tried a few things, read a bit about it, make some adjustments, reloaded it, but it continues to crash. I am not going to waste any more time on it. It is gone.
I continue to have problems with my headset, which I use for Skype. Now, maybe it is because I tend to buy cheap headsets, but I think how complicated can a headset be? My next to last one was made by Dynex. It had great overall sound but people would tell me it sounded like I was popping bubble wrap next to the mic when I typed. Apparently, it has no background sound reduction capability. So, now I have one by Logitech. Now I am getting complaints that sound like I am in a well when I talk. That was not a problem with Dynex. Skype can be a little quirky itself, but my intent is to pick up one of more headsets until I find one that works well.
Such is the life of a home office, connected non-techie. Try it. Do not like it. Trash it. It is how we vote on the tech we like and do not like.
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