The Latest, for Less

The end of the year is traditionally the time law firms and attorneys reevaluate their computer technology, with an eye to replacing what's become outdated. These days, however, cost is more important than ever. Here are some hot products that won't melt your wallet:

A Kinder Tablet
A growing number of lawyers are incorporating iPads into their practice. At a little over a pound, Apple's iPad is easy to take to court or on a business trip. The battery stays charged a long time, and iPads wake up from sleep mode instantly, which is good when you need to answer a legal question on the spot.

The one drawback of the iPad, though, is the price. The iPad 2 retails for $499 to $829, depending on the amount of memory and whether you want 3G, and with Apple, of course, there's no such thing as a sale. But an increasing number of competitors are selling tablet computers that cost hundreds of dollars less and offer comparable features, if not the superior style of the iPad. The least expensive by far is the HP TouchPad, whose price was slashed to $99 last summer when HP announced it was pulling out of the personal computer and tablet business. (The price of the 16GB TouchPad had been $499.)

Lenovo, the Chinese company that acquired IBM's PC division in 2005, has several tablets on the market, including the Ideapad A1, which retails for $199. Dell's Streak 7 Wi-Fi tablet sells for about $299, and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 goes for just under $400. All of these alternatives run the Android operating system except the TouchPad, which runs HP's own operating system. Also, Amazon recently introduced its Kindle Fire for $199.

The Just-Right PC
Many lawyers face what might be called the Goldilocks Dilemma: They lug around a laptop for travel, but often find it a bit too heavy and bulky. A smartphone is certainly lighter and more compact, but too small for serious work like writing a brief. Tablet computers such as the iPad and its imitators aim for the sweet spot in the middle, but still lack the physical keyboard that extended writing requires.

Enter a new category of computers that, like Goldilocks's choice of beds, may be just right for many users. Intel's Ultrabooks fill a niche between full-size laptops and tablet computers. They're much lighter and slimmer than laptops (no more than .8 inches thick), promise longer battery life and a built-in keyboard, and retail for less than $1,000.

In May, Intel announced plans to release its first model, which aims to merge the performance capabilities of a laptop with the convenience of a tablet. Computer makers Acer, Asus, Lenovo, and Toshiba plan to soon release their own models.

An Ultrabook might be a particularly good investment for any lawyer who must use Microsoft's Windows operating system but yearns for full functionality in a package as thin and sleek as a MacBook Air. Ultrabooks could solve the Goldilocks problem once and for all.

A Truly Economical Printer
If King Gillette were alive today, he'd be selling computer printers. In 1901, the salesman and inventor developed the world's first disposable razor blade. But Gillette's marketing strategy was the real breakthrough: He decided to give away the razor, more than making up that sales price from the succession of replacement blades his customers would be locked into buying.

Gillette's business model has been enthusiastically adopted by computer printer manufacturers, who price their printers low, knowing they can soak customers later for dozens of expensive replacement ink cartridges. A typical midline HP Deskwriter model, for example, sells for about $120, but replacement ink cartridges cost around $40. Somewhere, King Gillette is smiling.

Of course, you can purchase off-brand or "remanufactured" cartridges online for about $20 per cartridge. But many users have experienced mixed results: Sometimes the cartridges leak, and a pool of black ink is never pleasant to clean up. Other times, the software that runs the printer may not recognize the off-brand cartridge and will flash an error message or inaccurately measure the amount of ink you still have.

But a new line of Kodak printers is aimed squarely at the millions of printer owners who have despaired at the high cost of replacement ink and don't want to bother with off-brand cartridges. Kodak boasts that its Hero and ESP all-in-one printers have the lowest total ink replacement cost on the market, and they may be right. Online, you can pay as little as $17 to replace all of the black and color ink cartridges needed for a Kodak printer, which adds up to big savings over the lifetime of the printer.

The best bet for a lawyer is to invest in an all-in-one machine, one that can print, copy, scan, and fax. Kodak's line ranges in cost from about $100 to $250, slightly more than you'd pay for an entry-level Epson but much cheaper in the long run when you factor in ink replacement costs. Several of the Kodak models let you print wirelessly from an iPhone, iPad, or BlackBerry device, a nice feature for attorneys on the move.

Scanner to Go
A major annoyance for many lawyers is having to mark up or highlight paper documents - and then file or lug around the results. You could convert the document into an electronic file by scanning it, but sometimes all you want to highlight are a few key passages. A portable handheld scanner is just what you need.

These pen-size scanners are perfectly suited for rapid scanning of small text blocks, tables, or notes you've taken. Most can save files directly into any Windows or Mac OS application, and several have a text-to-speech option that lets you hear what you've scanned.

The IRISPen Executive Scanner 6, which sells for about $200, scans up to 1,000 characters per second - much faster than anyone's hand can move - and supports a number of foreign languages. The more modest VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand Portable Scanner, priced around $90, does the job with no frills.

Once you've captured text with a handheld scanner, you can easily save the selection in Microsoft Word or the software application of your choice - thereby avoiding the hassle of managing a mixture of electronic files and paper documents. It may not help you figure out what all the words add up to, but at least they'll all be in one place.

These pen-size scanners are perfectly suited for rapid scanning of small text blocks, tables, or notes you've taken.

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