Why Upgrading Your Computers Isn’t As Scary As You Thought

Here’s a guide on what you should know about upgrades.

One of the most common questions people ask me is how often they should upgrade their hardware and software. This is a particularly challenging question for law firms, many of which use specialty software that doesn’t keep pace with many major software developers. So, here’s a guide on what you should know about upgrades:

Hardware:

A point was reached about ten years ago where the bells and whistles that come with more expensive machines were no longer needed to do what we need to in our law offices. The confounding problem is that new processors, like the Atom processor, are also being made that offer things like cheap price and long battery life if in tablets, but are much weaker when trying to multitask. So here’s a pretty general chart on what processors can do for us. This doesn’t take into account things like RAM or video cards, but is more of a guide…

So the bottom line is that, unless you are going to be playing a lot of video games in your office, you can get by with just about any type of computer that has an AMD or Intel chip in it ($400-$500 and up). If you need to regularly work with several thousand-page PDFs or image files simultaneously, or are a snob about milliseconds that it takes for programs to open, you won’t notice much of a difference in your ability to do day-to-day office functions in an i5 vs. an i7 computer.

Atom processors are good for portable tablets, but get frustratingly slow pretty quick when you try to multi-task.

Standard Equipment Is Not So Standard Anymore:

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If you are buying an office laptop, bear in mind that DVD/Blu-ray drives are so 2012 and are not standard equipment on a lot of laptops. The same goes with video out ports. A lot of laptops are coming with micro hdmi ports only and no VGA port (a welcomed farewell to that obsolete technology). If you want to hook up to another screen, you’ll need to pay close attention to the port situation and see what kind of adapters you’ll need.

Operating System and Software Concerns:

I remember when Windows 8 came out. The largest tech store in town had a clearance sale of their Windows 7 computers. I went down to see if there were any good deals and was surprised to see all of the people who were frantically buying up Windows 7 computers as if they were come kind of rare commodity. They were buying the display models with missing keys on the keyboard.

I didn’t upgrade to Windows 8 for my work computers until about the end of 2013 mostly because I didn’t want to learn a new operating system. Also, a lot of the programs that I used were not compatible with Windows 8 and I had heard so many bad things about it. The reason I upgraded was not because I finally wanted to know what Windows 8 was, but because I had to replace a broken computer and couldn’t find a Windows 7 computer that I wanted. So, the inefficiency of having to learn something new was thrown at me. If you have a computer that is kind of on the old side and you don’t want to learn a new operating system and a new operating system is coming out soon, you might want to think about replacing your computer a little sooner than anticipated.

As far as upgrading Microsoft Office or other day-to-day programs, unless you are pretty handy at troubleshooting, I would suggest waiting at least a few months for bloggers and vloggers to post their helpful solutions to common problems. Doing a quick search on YouTube or Google to find out where some button was moved to, or how to solve common problems can save you hours of headaches trying to figure it out on your own. Most of the time, the features included in software updates do not let you draft pleadings or correspondence more efficiently, so there is no rush to upgrade.

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The Best Upgrade You Can Buy:

A solid state drive will replace your hard drive and will almost entirely eliminate boot times and splash screens. You just turn your computer on and a few seconds later, you are opening programs or browsing the web. I got a 750gb solid state drive about a year ago for about $450. I wanted to increase the speed of my computer before I started a four-week trial. One time as we were coming back from lunch, I noticed things were acting strange on my computer and I decided to just reboot it. The judge said, “Are we ready to bring the jury in?” We all answered, “Yes, You Honor” as I hit the restart button on my computer. When the bailiff went out to get the jury, my computer had already shutdown. As they were filing in, my computer had already rebooted. About 10 seconds had gone by at this point. Before all of the jurors could even shuffle into the courtroom, I had rebooted my computer and restarted all of the programs I needed.


Jeff Bennion is a solo practitioner from San Diego. When not handling his own cases, he’s consulting lawyers on how to use technology to not be boring in trial or managing e-discovery projects in mass torts/complex litigation cases. If you want to be disappointed in a lack of posts, you can follow him on Twitter or on Facebook. If you have any ideas of things you want him to cover, email Jeff at jeff@trial.technology.

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