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With Memorial Day weekend coming up, it's time to think about treating yourself and your family to a much-needed vacation. It's difficult to leave a busy practice behind for some lawyers, but it is really important to de-stress once in a while. You will feel rested and refreshed when you return to the office in a couple weeks.

It used to be we would have to notify everyone of our absence and clear our schedule. Now, tech and vacations can work together. If you don't actually have to be somewhere, as the Lawyerist reminds us, technology can free us to get out of town and not look back. Well, not look back too much.

Here are five ways you can take a tech-sponsored vacation without your clients or opposing counsel making you regret it:

As a faithful Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (Google’s homebrewed Android phone and tablet, respectively) user, I am almost as enthusiastic about Android as that Droid Lawyer guy. So when I received an email from the ABA announcing the newly published Android Apps in One Hour for Lawyers by Daniel Siegel, my curiosity was piqued. A book that promises to introduce me to an already familiar world? Why not? Maybe I’ll learn something new.

Best of all? The ABA kindly provided a copy of the book for review, saving my $40 for more apps.

When we reviewed Total Attorneys way back in February, we walked away with a generally positive impression. Though the interface was less polished then its competitors, and though it lacked a couple of desired features, the bottom line was the bottom line: $1 per attorney.

That's $1 for calendaring, contact management, billing, invoices, trust accounting, and document storage. We figured the price was a lure to get users in, with hopes that they'd pay for upgrades, such as the $35/month for payment processing. Even if it was a lure, $1/user/month was an insanely low price.

The insanity just ended.

Last week, a friend and colleague forwarded this hilarious ABA Solo Newsletter piece which appears to be from … 1923 or so. There’s no date, but the tech suggestions for briefcase essentials are amusing. No, the author wasn’t recommending an Apple Newton, but it’s almost that bad.

If we had to guess, we’d tag it around 2004 or so — the heyday of the PDA and Palm Treo devices. So what were the recommendations? And what would today’s list look like?

What's the most popular video-chatting tool for businesses? Three instantly come to mind: Skype, Google Talk, and iChat/Facetime. Out of the three, Skype has pretty much ruled the business world. It was the first on the scene, it is popular internationally, as well as in the United States, and it's extremely cross-platform - with apps for nearly every imaginable computer and mobile operating system.

Lately though, Google Talk and Facetime have been making inroads, especially the former. Google's version is also available on a variety of platforms and on desktops, it can run through the browser via Gmail - meaning no proprietary software. A poll of TechCrunch readers found that 55.8 percent preferred Skype, while 31.7 percent preferred Google's offering.

Years ago, Google Apps was free for any organization that signed up. That meant you, and your fifty closest employees, could get free personalized @yourlawfirm.com Google accounts, which came with Gmail, calendars, and every other Google service.

It was nifty.

Many of us geeks snapped up accounts, even for personal domains with only one user. Alas, Google eventually trimmed the free version to five users, and then to no users. Unless you are a nonprofit organization, or got in before the switch, you’ll have to pay to play with Google.

Though Microsoft has released three major operating system since Windows XP, 39 percent of PCs world-wide still use the venerable, reliable, bullet-proof software, according to the Wall Street Journal. This creates a problem for Microsoft. Not only does it mean that 39 percent of the PCs haven’t had paid upgrades to the new platforms, but it also means that Microsoft has to continue dedicating resources to supporting, and securing, the elder statesman of operating systems.

Not for long, reports the Journal. The final countdown is on — and companies and law firms have one year to either upgrade to a more modern OS, or to purchase a custom support package from Microsoft (the latter is almost certainly a cost-prohibitive proposition).

This is a great idea. Seriously. Attorney Timekeeper is a simple way to track your billable hours in the majestic cloud. It has a touch-friendly interface. It's a heck of a lot better than using an egg timer or trying to forensically track time at the end of the day ("Well, let's see, there was that phone call, which my phone says was 24 minutes and 15 seconds. Then I went to the restroom ...").

Still, for $50 per month, what's the freaking point?

So, we may have just mocked the use of the term "disruptor" as a played-out descriptor of companies that are attempting to revolutionize an industry, but a new legal billing startup really could be an industry disruptor - just not in the way that they'd hoped.

Viewabill is the startup world's solution to bill-churning (or overbilling) in the legal industry. It allows honest lawyers and firms (cue jokes) to transparently bill everything they do using an always-on platform that a client can access and audit 24/7, reports the New York Times.

Sick of the myriad of half-baked office substitutes for Android and iOS devices? Take heart, tech geek lawyer: Microsoft is finally coming to the rescue.

According to a ZDnet, a leaked internal Microsoft Office roadmap shows that Office for iOS and Android is set for release in October 2014. Before it arrives to those devices, however, Office will be updated for Windows Blue, Mac OS, and Windows RT. The full schedule is: