Recently in Hardware Category

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet.

We are bombarded with advertising proclaiming longer and longer battery life for our various gadgets and devices.  Indeed, who hasn't had images of the Energizer Bunny burned into his or her mind?

But seriously folks, battery life isn't a joking matter.  When your cell phone or laptop dies on you for lack of battery power, you certainly don't feel like laughing.

A while back, when the new Kindle was first released, I wrote two posts about its possible applications for the legal industry.  Specifically, I looked at how law schools and publishers of legal textbooks might incorporate the Kindle into the legal education world, and I also lamented the dearth of legal titles available for the device in the Kindle store.

As it turns out, there are many more ways that the Kindle can streamline and enhance the practice of law.  Justin Rebello of the Wisconsin Law Journal has put together a list of 5 ways that lawyers can put the Kindle to use in order to save time, cut costs and increase efficiency.

The Wall Street Journal has an article in today's edition that gives a good recap of all the recent antitrust activity and its likely meaning for the technology industry. 

The article mentions that many companies formed their government-relations strategies based on the lax enforcement of the Bush administration.  Those companies are now getting ready to adjust to the new realities of a more active Obama administration. 

Yesterday, I wrote about Amazon's announcement of the Kindle DX, a new version of Amazon's popular ebook reader with a larger screen and more storage.  The device allows for a better display of large-format works such as textbooks and newspapers.  It also has a native PDF reader to display documents in the popular format.

All of which pointed to some Kindle applications for lawyers and law schools.  Documents could be shared on Kindles rather than printed on paper and distributed.  Law students could give up those heavy casebooks, and lawyers could keep all their legal practice books and treatises on one handy gadget.

Remember the good old days in law school, lugging around piles of huge, heavy casebooks?  Remember the multi-colored highlighters stuffed into your backpack, ready to mark important passages? 

And, most importantly, remember the light, weightless feeling of your wallet after purchasing said casebooks?

Future students of the law might not share those memories, if Jeff Bezos of Amazon has anything to say about it.

The New York Times has a great look at the future of netbooks for those of us who want to bring more than just our smartphones along when we're on the go, but don't want to lug around an eight pound laptop all day. 

The article also describes the ways that netbooks are poised to change the entire PC industry and threaten the near-monopolies of Microsoft and Intel.