An upfront, precise fee for legal advice is brought to us by Telecom.
Many people are too scared to walk in to a solicitors’ office because they do not know how much it will cost them and they are too afraid to ask.
Perhaps lawyers, like restaurants, should be compelled to put their menus on the window outside their offices: Conveyancing (buyer) $820; Conveyancing (seller) $540; Wills $140; Divorce (no kids or property) $670; Divorce (full-scale brawl) $56,000, plus your house. And so on.
In its absence Telecom has announced a service called InfoCall. Service providers (including lawyers) can provide recorded or live information service.
I was connected to James Woods, who charges $3 a minute ($180 a hour). A beeper goes off every five minutes to focus the attention on the matter at hand. In the shortest interview in my journalistic career, I found out that the firm was Victorian-based and not fully up to speed with ACT law. But business was booming and they would expand to give services to other jurisdictions.
It is very handy if you have a quick legal problem and do not have a solicitor. And here’s some free advice: if you are going to rely on the phone advice to make any financial decision, tape it and tell the party at the other end you are doing so.
The legal service is on 1902 243 613 (you are warned when billing starts).
There are other services. A medical-fees advisory service tells you if your medical bill is right: whether the correct Medicare item number has been used, whether the rebate is correct, the level of fee and how you can rearrange the bill to take advantage of the Government’s per-family threshold.
Malcolm Matthews explained (at $2 a minute) that medical billing is quite complex, it can get unintentionally messed up tot he patient’s disadvantage and a few minutes with him could be worthwhile. His service is independent of Medicare and the AMA. (1902 243 016).
A gardening service is on 1902 243 002. As our garden has long been subjected to a sort of horticultural Darwinism (plant, ignore and let the fit survive), I didn’t try it.
There are recorded services for shares and racing, the difference being that with the former you invest and lose capital and with the latter you invest and lose income.
However, if you want to bar lawyers, gardeners and gamblers from your phone line, phone 1800 035 055 (free!)
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Converging Phone Technology I: The phone rings. Is it a human, a fax or a data transmission? Interlink has just released a new modem called Voidax with some smart software enabling users to leave the business or home with the computer switched off.
Interlink answers the phone, records voice messages, data or faxes. When the computer is switched on it pops up a “”while you were out message” detailing what calls came in. The user just clicks on the call and the voice, fax or data comes out accordingly.
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Converging Phone Technology II: Instead of buying a paper fax machine, you can get a fax modem for $200 and send direct from your computer and receive into it, printing only what you want. But what about sending something you did not create on your computer? Try scanning. You can get a colour scanner for under $2000 (try pZIZAN at Kippax for its special on the colour UMAX and phone and look around elsewhere). You can scan and fax to another computer. The scanner will do colour, but if you want to transmit in colour you have to send the file as a data file, not as a fax.
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For the semi-literate who cannot write their own Dear John letters, Set Up Systems has produced 401 Great Letters for Windows ($89 03 4270168) that give you the basis for letters for business, complaints, legal issues and so on. You just fill in the blanks.
Also making office work less tedious, WordPerfect has released InFoms and program to design forms, distribute them by e-mail and put the results in a database. It is priced for big offices at $775 and additional filler licences at $150 a user.
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Microsoft is cutting it fine.
The value to new users of it’s MS-DOS 6 plummeted X months ago after it lost a court action in the US to Stac over copyright of part of the compression program on MS-DOS 6.
The program, called DoubleSpace, compressed files on the hard disk and decompressed them automatically on use, in effect doubling the size of hard disk.
Grateful users who bought the upgrade for $99 could postpone the upgrade of their hard disk as hungry new software chewed up more of it. That exercise costs about $200.
Indeed, for most Windows users that was the only reason to upgrade to 6.0.
Microsoft hopes to ship version 6.22 in six weeks. This version will have Microsoft’s own compression program
It hopes to have its MS-DOS 6.22 in Australia in six weeks. It will contain Microsoft’s own compression program.
In the meantime competitor Novell hit the market with Novell DOS 7 which had a compression program of its own. It retails for $99, an in the absence of a compression program on MS-DOS is clearly very appealing.
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Speaking of Novell, it has launched what it oxymoronically calls Personal NetWare. The program is aimed at the home-business and small business user for two to 20 PCs (say, 15 comfortably) and enables them to avoid the big-ticket net programs for large networks. The price including network hardware for two computers is $695. That probably puts it just in range of the two-person business stick of transferring files by floppies.
Novell has also joined the Government Fixed Term Arrangement IT program, Industry Minister Peter Cook announced last week.
Senator Cook said Novell will form collaborative ventures with several Australian firms and universities to develop an export-earning computer-based education program.
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Also on the Australian front, Packard Bell has started assembling 486 PCs at Mascot at the rate of 700 units a week. It is combining with Radio Rentals under the slogan “”A PC in every home”.
The Australian company Intag International Limited has developed a new smart card that you do not have to take out of your wallet. It sends its information by radio waves. It can be used for credit, medical and other purposes.
Perhaps the cops can get a gadget to read it from the side of the road so speeding fines can come straight out of the offender’s bank account.
And US software supplier Cincom is to establish its Asia Pacific headquarters in Sydney. The “”regional headquarters” business is highly competitive in this part of the world. Singapore may offer better tax rates, but at least in Sydney any American staff will not have to worry about their children being caned for minor vandalism.
The Australian company Uniloc has had some success with its relockable software. You get your disk with a demo and if you like what you see, you can send the money and get the code to unlock the software. Uniloc’s system goes further. The software enables a user to relock the software when passing it on to other users and if the other users buy a further unlocking code, the original user gets a reward.
The software can sense if it is being used on the machine it was licensed for.
The company thinks that if the system is used widely it will prevent a lot of software piracy.
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The latest commercial pressure to hit Internet, originally the academic global network, comes from US technology publisher Mecklermedia. It wants to put a global shopping mall on the net _ a sort of world Yellow Pages. It will be seen by many academic users a yellow press indeed.
Internet evolved through the universities as a means for academics to communicate cheaply and quickly around the world.
Till now is has been an ideas network, not a commerce one. It has been fairly difficult to use. This has kept the masses out. This, however, could change. Two programs, one for Windows, have been produced to convert Internet’s arcane Unix commands into point-and-click-for-morons.
The programs are: MKS Internet Anywhere for Windows (USA 519 8834371, fax 519 8848861. $US189) and a package with Trumpet Winsock, WINQVT and Mosaic. Each acts with different parts of the Net. The authors say it is hard to install put easy to use (just like a dunny). Available as shareware and public domain from Andy Peyton (apeyton act.acs.org.au).
I have not got copies of either package yet.