Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/478549
10 March 2015 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com FROM THE TRENCHES By Randy Johnston Promising Accounting Technology from T he 8K glassless 3D telev ision units were magnifcent to see, but unti l content is read i ly ava i lable, we'll have to put of purchasing one for another year or two. Likewise, the A ndroid speak ing robot from Toshiba, Chihira A ico, was amazing to watch, but also somewhat creepy since the facial expressions moved so acc u rately du r i ng speech a nd s i n g i n g . S o m e o f t h e b u s i n e s s products discussed in this ar ticle will be available now, and some have a much longer road map and delivery time. However, quite a few of the i t e m s r e l e a s e d w i l l a f f e c t w h a t should be purchased as ta x season comes to a close. So What Are The Most Important New Tools? Computer vendors a re con f u sed about v iable places to show t heir new products. It is clear that press releases, web sites a nd consu mer electronic stores are not sufcient at getting new product in for mation out. Further, there is nothing quite like seeing and touching products to get an initial reaction on how they might work in your frm. CES 2015 conta i ned a notable number of new products that would change purchase decisions this year over last. Included are: • New generation curved monitors from HP, Samsung , Toshiba, LG and others. One of these could potentially reduce a three monitor setup to one, taking less space on your desk and giving a beter image to work with. • Higher resolution monitors, including 5K, were shown. Sofware and hard- ware should be supporting these larger layout monitors this year, giving a full 4K image while surrounding the image with tool bars such as PDFlyer or Tic, Tie and Calculate. • Display adapters supporting up to 5K resolutions. Tese become important to buyers of laptops and other por- table units like the Microsof Surface. Te demonstration unit running a 5K monitor from a Surface performed brilliantly. • Docking stations with 4K resolutions from companies like DisplayLink, Targus, Lenovo, IOGear and others. It was too early to purchase these products in 2014, but at this point most of the bugs, driver updates, operating systems and application support have been worked out. You could choose a 4K monitor strategy instead of a 5K approach. • New laptops from ever y notable ven d o r i n c l u d i ng H P, L en ovo, Toshiba, and others. Te new genera- tion laptops are more serviceable, and have new SSD drives that are twice the speed of SSD drives from 2014 and before. Some models have touch screen and 10 key pads built into the units. A s these new generation products become available, all prod- ucts released in 2014 and before are less atractive as primary units for an accounting frm. • Improved scanners for both the desktop and portable use by auditors. Canon was the clear winner with new products shown at CES including the desktop DR-160II, which has both TWAIN and VRS sofware included as well as the portable P-215II. • Faster solid state drives. As noted above, both HP with their Z-Wave technology and Toshiba introduced notable improvements in speed in Solid State Drives. Toshiba also showed smaller format SSD units. • Better removable hard drive tech- nologies. Lacie Rugged RID, Sam- sung's 1TB USB3 SSD, and the Syn- olog y NA S vendors were all big winners with their new oferings. • Smart capture boards for meeting rooms, such as Smart Kapp. Available in both fip chart and marker board sizes, this vendor has an application that allows what is on the marker board to be captured on a tablet like 1 0 M a r c h 2 0 1 5 • w w w . C P A P r a c t i c e Randy Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant and writer with over 30 years' experience. He can be contacted at randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com . M a n y c o n s u l t a n t s t o t h e p r o f e s s i o n a t t e n d t h e annual Consumer Elec - tronic Show (CES) to look for the latest gadgets and gizmos for themselves and their clients. Te 2015 version of the show didn't receive enough coverage when it comes to useful business tools for accounting professionals, although there was frantic reporting on other consumer electronics. A variety of new technologies were on display at CES 2015.