The proposed operation—to install the Windows OS on an external SSD and to use this as an external boot-brain on a current model MacBook Air—apparently proved trickier in the event than the techie round the corner first thought: I dropped off the hardware on a Monday and could not retrieve it until eight days later. Halfway through the week I expressed some anxiety about the billable hours mounting up, making the reasonable point that I feared paying a substantial fraction of the computer's original cost for a functionality I could have added myself to the internal SSD. However, the proprietor, who has had my custom on a few projects over the years, put a very reasonable cap on the job, saying that his technicians had gained valuable experience that he hoped to leverage with other customers.

Anyway, the machine is back home, and starts automatically in Win10 when the SSD is plugged in. The actual startup is off-puttingly creaky—three or four minutes—but once it's up and running it seems brisk enough. L has the better part of 250 GB to work with, while leaving her smaller 120GB internal drive unpartitioned and uncluttered with Redmond impedimenta. I installed the current version of the WordPerfect suite (WordPerfect has a hold on the legal profession approximately equivalent to the market share the Mac OS enjoys among designers) this afternoon, and L appears well pleased, although, as she is fond of reminding me, "one oh shit wipes out ten attaboys." It does seem a rather elegant solution, the functional equivalent of a Windows environment that fits in the palm of her hand, and she says it will impress the other lawyers. It doesn't hurt, from her standpoint, that I paid for the computer, the external SSD, the OS, the software suite and the surgery, but these are the things that contribute to domestic harmony, if also to an impecunious retirement unless some of her damn cases start paying off.

cordially,