Macs Wear Well in Maine's Judicial Courts

Dana Baggett, our New England Editor, was Maine's State Court Administrator from 1981 through 1992. He chose Macs over other computer systems for the Administrative Office of the Maine state court system in 1985, the first in the Nation to do so. He successfully fought off proponents of other systems including the Wang Word Processor (remember those?) with the expectation that the Mac's GUI would improve productivity in the office.

Dana was right. It took him less than an hour to set up a 512K Mac and produce his first letter. Not long after that, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court began writing its opinions on Macs using WordPerfect. The Supreme Judicial Court wrote its own opinions and shared draft opinions from several different locations on a private WAN in the 80s! Then, Macs migrated as funds permitted to the trial courts in the 1990s.

Macs are still predominant in Maine's court system. We wondered how cost-effective Macs have been in Maine's courts, so we asked Ted Glessner, Maine's current state court administrator. Here's his answer to Dana, edited only for space limitations.

"Over the years, many people have questioned our decision to remain with the Macintosh computers but, as you would undoubtedly expect, we continue to have very good luck with them. As time has gone on, the limitations of operating on Macs in a PC world have become less and less. I was able to determine that our oldest Mac is an SE/30, which was purchased in 1989.... (I)t is used to diagnose network software problems using a software that provides useful information, although it is recognized that the Mac does need to be replaced....

"...(W)e are still using PowerMac 7200's in a number of the courts. They were purchased in January 1996 and they are being phased out... (but) they are still out there doing their daily work. Your question about how this compares with PCs being used elsewhere in state government is an intriguing question but one that we are unable to answer. Someday, it would be very interesting to be able to look into that."

Thanks, Ted.