The Treo 650 and the Home Office Lawyer

And now a guest post from our friend Grant Griffiths:

One of the best tools  I purchased for my law practice is my Treo 650.  And today if you are looking for a Treo, you have many great choices as this Comparison Chart shows. 

I use the Treo each and every day.  From its alarm to wake me in the morning and a quick update on what today's weather will be.  To using the calendar/contact program I use to maintain my mobile calendar and address book.  Since my practice deals mainly with domestic cases and criminal defense, I spend a lot of time in the courthouse.  The Treo allows me to stay connected to my office via call forwarding.  I also can check my email from my Treo.  And when I am in court or out of the home office, I can check and update my calendar with my Treo.  But one of the best time savers is the contact management provided.  If and when I need to call anyone I may deal with in my practice, I simple go to the contacts on my Treo and place the call directly from the contacts information.   The Treo has so many great features and I have added some great software to it. 

The additional software I use enables me to manage my calendar and contacts so much more than I could ever do with a paper system.  And, when I get back to the office I simple sync my Treo to my office computer and it is updated with anything added to the Treo while out of the office.

As mentioned, emailing is also a great feature of the Treo.  I use email a great deal in my practice to keep in contact with clients, judges, clerks and other attorneys.  I can check and send emails no matter where I am at as long as I have cell phone service.  Another great time saver and another great way to stay connected.  No longer do I have to wait to get back to the office or hunt for a wifi hotspot to use email.  And since clients have come to expect 24/7 service, having the Treo enables me to do the best I can to meet those demands.

Because I am so sold on the benefits of the Treo and the help it can actually give you in your law practice, I have started a new blog called the PDA Lawyer.   I plan to provide information and insight in using the Treo and other PDAs in a law practice.  What got me thinking about doing this blog was the fact I found one for doctors which did the same for them.  And, I could not find a blog which really provided this type of information from the viewpoint of a lawyer.  I hope other lawyers or law students will visit the PDA Lawyer and post their comments about their own experiences with a PDA.  And for those lawyers or even law students who don't use a PDA, I hope they hop on and post questions.

Comments

[Ben Glass]

OK, Grant, you've convinced me to go to your blog and check it out!..Thanks!

[Grant Griffiths]

I run certain programs on my Treo that cured the problems you mentioned. First of all, you need to keep at least 8 meg of Ram available. I do this by using a program called PowerRUN. With PowerRUN you can move applications to the Card and actually run them from the card with PowerRUN. Another great program is NVBackup. I do a backup of my Treo every morning at 1:00 a.m and it does it itself. That way if I do need to do a restore, it is on my Card and it is as simple as a 5 minutes of wait. Destaller is another program I use to make sure I get a complete un-install of programs I decide I don't want to keep. I run a lot of programs on my Treo and even with so many and by using the programs mentioned above, I have 10.5 meg of internal RAM left open all the time. I have yet had to call tech support. Use these programs and I don't believe you will either. As for the phone feature, I have not had problems with that either. I use one program that increases the volume of the Treo by a bunch. It is called VolumeCare. Get it, you will like it too.

[Ben Glass]

Funny.. and I was just thinking that I would never buy a Treo again... I too own a 650.. in fact, the firm owns 3. One has been traded in at least 5 times for defects. You basically have to hire a tech support person to help synch it with any sophisticated network email and the darn thing crashes so many times I have the "how do I stop eternal rebooting" web page bookmarked.

I got the Treo mainly for the email acess but with my Verizon wireless card on my laptop, I don't need it for that anymore.

I agree that the Palm products are great for keeping track of contacts and calendar but the phone is mediocre and the thing has cost me far more in time lost rebooting it, sometimes back to its original state, only to then take the time to restore data and programs. And I'm not even counting the time lost while my associate had to keep on hold for tech support and/or run to the Treo store to get them to replace (yet) another one.

I'm glad my good friend Grant has had better luck with his!

Ben Glass