Duplex Printing Sold Separately

Keep in mind that many printers will only automatically print out on both sides of a page, if a separate duplexer is installed. This is the case with the widely used HP 600. The specs for a printer may state that it prints double-sided, but it may not do this automatically. The user may be required to re-feed the pages one by one.

The duplexer for the HP 600 will slide effortlessly in to the rear of the printer without the need to connect any cables, or tighten any screws. Beware of the fact that an ordinary power cord with a straight head can't be used with the duplexer. You'll need a cord with a right angle head like this one:

A standard power cord will prevent you from sliding the duplexer fully into position.

Trial Director 360 Specs - 2 GB of Dedicated VRAM

One of the very earliest Tips of the Night from April 12, 2015, warned hot seat trial techs using Trial Director to confirm that the laptop they were using contains at least 1 GB of VRAM - video dedicated RAM.

For the current version of Trial 360, Ipro notes that at minimum the laptop should have a graphic card with 128 MB of dedicated video memory, but recommends using a device with a NVID or AMD graphics card with 2 GB of dedicated video memory.

Beware that a laptop with integrated memory will not give you as much power for editing and presenting video clips as you may need. Take for example the Acer Swift 3 with an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U octa-core processor and Radeon Graphics. This is widely lauded as a laptop with amazingly fast performance for a device priced well under $1000. However, it lacks a dedicated graphics processing unit, and it does not qualify as a true gaming laptop. Gaming laptops, like those put out by Alienware, set the standard for trial techs needing to present video clips without any lags in the courtroom. A laptop using an integrated graphics processing unit will draw on the system's overall memory.

A dedicated video card will be required for resource intensive tasks like graphic designing. Note that this will also cause the laptop to run very hot and use up more power. It may be wise to get a laptop cooling pad.

Trial Director also recommends a quad core processor, and 8 GB of system RAM. The 64-bit version of Windows 10 is required, and Trial Director 360 needs the 64-bit version of Microsoft Access.

Note Ipro's warning: "The minimum hardware requirements are suitable for trial preparation purposes.  The recommended hardware requirements are strongly suggested for courtroom presentation.” 

Believe me, you want to go with the recommended specs. It has been a while since it happened, but I have had the crushing experience of watching combined video segments play back incorrectly in court, after spending hours preparing them the night before.

AMD APU

If you’re getting a new laptop to use for electronic presentations consider getting an AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). Advanced Micro Devices‘ 64-bit microprocessor uses a graphics processing unit integrated with the CPU.

The AMD Ryzen APUs may function faster than some of Intel’s top processors, and are a cost effective option. However they may not function well with Nvidia discrete graphics cards that are separately installed. Unless your laptop has memory dedicated to video, its performance will be limited by the system RAM.

AMD's Ryzen 4000 'Renoir' APUs were released for system developers this summer, and may be a significant improvement over the previous Picasso APUs.