Windows, PowerPC Macs, or Intel Macs for the Law Office?

With Apple's transition to Intel processors in the new iMac and the 15" MacBook Pro, this is a very difficult time to choose which Mac to buy - or whether to buy one at all.

Normally, that isn't a very big deal, as chances are you either already have a Mac that will keep on working as well as always while you let the whole transition thing work itself out, or you're using a PC and can simply postpone your switch until things are more clear in Apple-land.

There are, however, situations where buying now makes a lot of sense.

I'm in the process of starting my own law firm, and rather than put up with all of the viruses and malware faced by Windows-using businesses, I decided from the very beginning that my law practice would be run on Macs. As I am opening my doors next month and stocks of PowerPC Macs are dwindling fast, I really had to make the decision now. I can easily see other Mac users in the same dilemma - if a machine fails or a new employee is added to an existing network, you might just need a new Mac today, instead of in June or July when we know more about the future Macintel releases and which programs are available as universal binaries.

Back to my law office. I need two machines from the start - a laptop for highly mobile me, and a desktop for my office manager. In a few months I'll be adding a paralegal, and I'll need a second desktop at that time. The office manager (my wife) will be doing light secretarial work, accounting, and scheduling.

The Right Desktop Mac

Microsoft Office 2004 is a must, QuickBooks Pro 2006 for the accounting, and the jury is still out on scheduling, with Office's Entourage and OS X iCal both strong possibilities, QuickBooks has a schedule module, or perhaps a law-firm-specific application like LawStream (expensive). Either way, the desktop Mac that I buy for the office today must be stable enough for absolutely mission-critical applications such as finance, be fast enough and have enough memory for multitasking, and have a large enough hard drive to be the central repository for everything (we're too small to need a server yet).

This was the most difficult decision, with the choice between Intel and PowerPC (PPC) first, and then, if PPC, whether to go cheap with a Mac mini with a view to upgrading it later, midrange with an iMac G5 or look at the very long term and spring for a Power Mac G5.

The processor choice was the most difficult part of the decision, as I decided fairly quickly on an iMac as much for appearance as for its attributes. The iMac, in either Intel or PPC, presents a very clean and modern appearance that I believe tells potential clients that my firm is up-to-date.

With Intel, I was looking at a 17" for $1,299, while the sweet spot with PowerPC was the 20" G5 at $1,499. In the end, it came down to the beauty of the 20" display coupled with the fact that the applications I will use today are all optimized for the PowerPC G5.

While universal binaries are no-doubt just around the corner, the G5 will continue to do a fine job for at least three or so years, and when it finally is obsolete, it will still make a great machine for a paralegal to browse the Web and draft documents on.

The Right Portable Mac

For the laptop, the choice was far, far easier. I like small and light laptops, and there is no small model with the Intel chip. Normally I would want the latest and greatest, and having the iSight camera built-in was extremely appealing to me, but I just reconcile myself to lugging around a 15" laptop all day, every day.

I looked long and hard to find a remaining 12" PowerBook with the Combo drive (discontinued back in October) and smaller hard drive, but ultimately had to just spend the extra money and get the SuperDrive model with the larger drive. Neither feature really mattered to me for what I will use this for (the iMac has a dual layer SuperDrive, and I don't plan on storing my music or video collection on the hard drive), but the 12" screen size is much better for my use.

I actually seriously considered the 12" iBook, which has every bit as much useable performance in the applications I'll use (primarily Office and QuickBooks), but I just didn't like the feel of the keyboard, and it looks bulky next to the PowerBook.

It felt rather strange spending almost $3,000 on last year's all-but-discontinued technology, but unlike a home machine, I think it's just a better idea right now to put my business on tried-and-true technology. The G5 iMac with iSight is actually a bit too new to have a reliability record, but the previous G5 iMac did well, and there are no real horror stories yet with this model.

The 12" PowerBook G4 has been essentially unchanged since early 2004, when the early 867 MHz models were upgraded to a cooler-running design at 1.0 GHz. Since then, changes have been subtle, and these have been among the most reliable computers in the Apple lineup.

Switching from Windows to Mac

Now for the good news. Switching from a Windows machine to a Mac is a lot easier than it was the last time I did it three years ago. Back then, I had to beg and plead to get an IMAP email account - and then painstakingly upload messages from my MS Outlook email archives on the PC and download them into Mail on the Mac.

Today its much easier. I used Mozilla Thunderbird, which I already had on Windows for my personal email account, and imported all of my Outlook archive folders. Simply add the ".mbox" suffix to each mailbox file in Thunderbird's settings and then import them directly into Mail or Entourage. It was very easy and took all of 20 minutes to import over six year's worth of email.

Documents moved right over the network, and my calendar was easily imported via my BlackBerry, which - unlike as recently as two months ago - now synchronizes for free (that used to be an expensive third-party solution).

In the end, I'll end up going Macintel down the road, just like most people will. Were I buying an iMac for my home or if I liked slightly larger laptops, I'd have bought an Intel machine today.

For an office computer, however, I went with the known solution, while for the laptop, I am a firm believer in "less is more". I'll leave the beta-testing of specific applications under Rosetta to others and wait until another computer is needed in my office before I take the Intel plunge. By then, hopefully, there will be universal binary updates to both QuickBooks and Microsoft Office - or they will both have a solid track record for reliable operation under Rosetta with minimal slowdown.

Until then, the Apple products that we knew and loved last year remain every bit as powerful and capable as they always were - they just aren't the latest and greatest anymore.