April 1990; Volume 9, No. 2; Whole No. 74

CFOG's PIP, April 1990, Volume 9 No. 2, Whole No. 74, page 13

Law Office Technology Review

by Benjamin H. Cohen

A few of you may be interested to know what it is I'll be doing that requires that I relinquish the esteemed position of Editor of PIP. My new title is Executive Editor (how about that!) of the Law Office Technology Review. LOTR is a syndicated column started over two years ago by Barry D. Bayer, an attorney from Homewood, Illinois, and Mark J. Welch, then a law student at the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall Law School.

I've known Barry for several years: we have served together on the Executive Council of the Chicago Bar Association's Real Property Committee and have twice travelled together to Springfield to appear before House Judiciary II Committee to seek repeal (ultimately obtained) of the short-lived "shrinkwrap license" statute.

A few weeks ago Barry told me that Mark, having graduated and passed the California bar, was seeking (and obtained) employement full time as a lawyer and had decided he no longer wanted to write the column. Did I know anyone who might be interested in doing some 'serious' writing. Barry asked disingenuously. Did I? Those of you who know me know there's nothing I like better than using, talking about, and writing about computers. And this deal means getting paid to do it. I haven't had such a good time since User's Guide to CP/M went out of business back in the fall of 1985!

The upshot is that this die-hard CP/M user has been weaned over to using MS-DOS. Ugh. Over a ten day period I worked with Better Working Eight-in-One and toyed with MicroSoft Works while three of us reviewed those two programs and PFS:First Choice: in 1500 words or less. We cut to the bone and then cut more: leaving out such minor details as Eight-in-One's failure to fully support three (HP LaserJet with B Cartridge -- no cartridge fonts, Epson LX86 -- only 10 and 5 pitch, and Diablo 1610 compatible -- no underscore) of the four printers that we tried (Epson LQ 2500 was the fourth).

LOTR appears in about a dozen or so "legal" newspapers and publications from Connecticut to Texas to California. The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin carries it on Wednesdays; if you're in the Loop late on Wednesday or on Thursday you'll find that some newsstands carry the Law Bulletin and you can see our column.

There's also a monthly newsletter ($89.50 a year, send subscription checks to LOTR, Box 1674, Chicago, IL 60690), that basically consists of the month's columns. We plan to add some material to the newsletter to encourage subscriptions from people in the cities where the column appears.

There are two main casualties: KaftorWare Corporation and PIP. Sales of PC-File 80 have always been rather slow. There's no more time for that. Bill Roch of Elliam Assiociates, (P.O. Box 2664, Atascadero, CA 93243) will take over the distribution and support effective some time in May. Questions about PC-File 80 can be left on the answering machine at [708] 965-8144, but you'll get faster answers from Bill, who generally answers the telephone directly. If you're a CP/M user and don't have Bill's catalog, drop him a note and request one now: he has lots of good stuff.

Obviously the editorship of PIP is a casualty: writing a weekly column will not leave time for any such shenanigans, even quarterly. Fortunately, Bob Thomson, editor of Toggle, is retired, and has the time to put out an excellent monthly newsletter, so from that point of view things will probably get better for CFOG members!

The first thing I'll be doing with the ill-gotten gains from this venture is to get a faster MS-DOS system. I've got a Kaypro 16 (PC-Tools says it's 10% faster than an original IBM PC -- RAH!), and Barry lent me a Compaq Plus (the Kaypro has no slot and I've got some hand held scanners with OCR software to test), but these systems are much too slow for real testing. My brother has offered me a free '286-10 mother board with 1 Mb of 120ns RAM and an 80287, and I'm going to build a system around that: 80 Mb hard drive, high density 5.25 inch drive, VGA mono, I/O card. No color. Oh yeah, a keyboard. You know how persnickety I am about keyboards.

I'm considering adding a CompatiCard IV and a 2.88 Mb 3.5 inch drive from MicroSolutions. The idea is to be able to throw most software packages onto the 3.5 inch 2.88 megger and run them from there. When I'm done I just stick the thing in a box. If I need it again for some reason, it's there.

We're planning to go to Spring COMDEX. Atlanta is a city where our column appears, so it won't hurt to go down there and shake a few hands, as well as seeing what's new. It'll fill a column, too -- maybe.

Well, it's kinda like the old days with a monthly PIP, except the column is shorter than an issue of PIP, comes up weekly, and has a real deadline (please don't call me on Wednesday).