From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Subject: Re: Computers for Law (Was Re: Advice for first year law student?)
Originator: mnemonic@eff.org
Organization: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 13:40:38 GMT

In article <1992Aug21.215516.22398@leland.Stanford.EDU> garygm@leland.Stanford.EDU (Gary Brainin) writes:

>   It is true that modern Macs can read & write DOS disks, and can
>even emulate PC functionality.

I didn't say anything about emulation, by the way. I think emulation is
generally a poor solution.

>  But conversion is not the same as true
>compatibility; I've spent more hours than I care to think about trying
>to convert documents from one format to another, and it's always a
>bloody pain, and you always lose something in translation.  (Or gain
>something, as the case may be.)

I disagree here. I never have serious problems of this sort.

>   This problem is compounded by the fact that the industry standard
>DOS word processor is WordPerfect, which, apparently, nobody uses on
>the Mac.  So you're not only translating between platforms, but
>between file formats.

Converting between DOS WordPerfect and, say, Microsoft Word for the Mac
has been trivial for me so far.

>   Furthermore, the computer on your desk (assuming you are lucky
>enough to have one) is likely to be a DOS machine.  You could buy a
>powerbook and lug it back and forth to work every day, you could buy a
>second computer for work, or you could learn to use the one that's
>there.  If you've been using DOS for the last three years, the last
>option will be easy.

Learning DOS machines as a lawyer is not particularly difficult. Learning
them for the first time when you're a first-year law student turns out
to be a bit more difficult, as I've discovered from counselling first-year
law students. The nice thing about Macs is that they take less time from a
first-year student's studies.

>   What you lose by getting a mac, then, is seamless compatibility
>with what's likely to be out there in the workplace.  There are ways
>around it.  You can learn to convert files, and if you're computer
>savvy enough, this becomes more of a nuisance than a true obstacle.

It's really not even a nuisance.

>You could buy SoftPC, but why buy an expensive mac just to run it as
>if it were a 286?

Who suggested this? Not I. I could buy SoftPC, I suppose, but I've never
had a need to run DOS applications.

>   So while I wouldn't go so far as to make any blanket
>recommendations, I don't think saying that macs read DOS disks (though
>true) quite captures the entire problem.

Capturing the entire problem was not my goal. What I was trying to say
was that, all things considered, I think students are better off with
Macs as their first computers if they're first-years. If they already
own a DOS machine, of course, they should stick with what they know.
The whole business of incompatibility with your law office--which Anne
Mitchell stated in extreme terms--seems to be fairly extreme exaggeration,
even if we grant that most law offices have DOS platforms. 



--Mike




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Mike Godwin,    |"If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First
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