Imagine any of the following scenarios:

• You returned to your office this morning to find it had burned to the ground overnight. You cannot salvage anything but a few crispy bits of your pencil sharpener.
• Someone swiped your laptop on the train this morning while you were on your way to work. Nobody seems to have seen the person who did it.
• While working on a brief, you are just putting on the finishing touches when your computer’s hard drive stutters a few times, then dies completely.
• Last night, someone broke into your office and, realizing your clients’ personal information would sell for far more than your computer hardware, rifled through your files, making off with your client information sheets.

Now, ask yourself a few questions.

• Will you ever be able to recover your physical data? Unless it was protected in a fire-proof safe, few attorneys keep spare client files.
• How long will it take to recover your electronic data, and what will you have lost? In other words, how solid is your backup system, and do you have off-site backup?
• How much will it cost to purchase credit-monitoring for all of your past and present clients? If your laptop is stolen and your data is not encrypted, or a thief makes off with part of your paper files it seems only fair.
• How will you (a) prevent, or (b) mitigate the effects of each of these scenarios?

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A story of my love for my old laptop, an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T43, and my disappointment with the “updated” version, the Lenovo T61

I bought my ThinkPad T43 in August 2005. I love this computer. It is thin, light, powerful, and tough as nails. It may not be as pretty as an iBook or MacBook, but in size and weight, it compares favorably. Until a few weeks ago, I only replaced a trackpad button (too many video games) and the optical drive. Both were replaced nearly instantaneously by Lenovo’s outstanding on-site support (I am not kidding, they are awesome, both then and now).

It came with Windows XP Pro, but I started using Ubuntu Linux with it about a year ago, as well, and it works nearly perfectly with both operating systems.

A few weeks ago, the motherboard on my T43 fizzled. I was certain my warranty had expired, so in a fit of impulsivity, I ordered a new ThinkPad T61 with all the bells and whistles. I was even thrilled to order it with SLED Linux pre-installed instead of Windows.

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My beloved ThinkPad died of USB-controller-induced vomiting last Thursday. One minute it was suspended, the next I tried to plug in a USB mouse and it went out like a light. It was four years old, though, so it has had a good life: coffee shops, courtrooms, the front porch . . .

The problem seems to be related to the Intel chipset, not the IBM/Lenovo hardware, so I fearlessly ordered a brand new ThinkPad T61. This time, I went with full-disk encryption so that my entire hard drive will be safe if I lose the computer.

Also, Lenovo offers Linux, so I bought a laptop with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. I’ll be throwing Ubuntu on there, as well, but I am looking forward to trying SUSE, as well. No more Windows for me!

Even though my old T43 was out of warranty, this seems to be related to a known defect, so I have some hope that Lenovo will replace the motherboard so I can squeeze some more life out of that laptop. In the past, I have experienced incredible customer service from Lenovo, so I have high hopes.

“I don’t like reading off a computer screen” — it’s a cliché of the e-book world. It means “I don’t read novels off of computer screens” (or phones, or PDAs, or dedicated e-book readers), and often as not the person who says it is someone who, in fact, spends every hour that Cthulhu sends reading off a computer screen. It’s like watching someone shovel Mars Bars into his gob while telling you how much he hates chocolate.

(As Doctorow is a die-hard advocate of the free flow of information, I don’t think he’ll mind my using his picture here. But if he does, I’ll gladly take it down.)

Cory Doctorow has a way with words, that much is certain. I’ve enjoyed his visionary sci-fi novels, and now, I enjoy this essay on reading off of computer screens Doctorow wrote for Locus Magazine. In essence, Cory points out, the computer is a device built for multitasking that always begs you to be doing something else. You do like reading off a computer screen, you just don’t have the attention to do it for more than thirty-second chunks of time.

(Speaking of which, this post has gone on long enough!)