Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
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FROM THE TRENCHES 2012 TECHNOLOGY UPDATE TECHNOLOGIE T echnology tools enable us to serve our clients better, work fewer hours to accomplish the same task, net more revenue to our firm and share- holders, and help with world peace. OK, maybe not that last part, but pretty much everything Low level changes Te following items will not have an immediate impact on your use of technology, but taken together, will make for notable changes in the speed and usability of hardware produced by all vendors. The fundamental building blocks of hardware are taken together to construct a whole solu- tion. ITEMS TO WATCH INCLUDE: Randy Johnston Mr. 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. r 6/*'*&% &95&/4*#-& '*3.- 8"3& */5&3'"$& 6&'* — Te Basic Input Output System (BIOS) specification has been with us for more than three de- cades. Windows 8 will see BIOS, as we know it, go away and the emergence of UEFI. UEFI is essentially the next generation of BIOS. It's a system that po- tentially offers new and more advanced control of the boot-up process. If your PC is less than two or three years old, chances are that it already has UEFI capa- bilities. Chances are very good that you didn't know that, be- cause the hardware manufactur- ers have been carefully keeping the old BIOS interface as your default boot system. Te Uni- fied Extensible Firmware In- terface (UEFI) is a specification that defines a soſtware interface between an operating system and platform firmware. UEFI is a more secure replacement for the older BIOS firmware interface, present in all IBM PC-compati- ble personal computers , which is vulnerable to bootkit malware. 14 August 2012 t www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com else can be accomplished if technology is managed right. In most columns, a single focus is chosen, but for this article, we are going to surf the technology to watch or that is coming soon. 2012 is a notable hardware year, setting us up for software gains in the coming years. Te original EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) specifica- tion was developed by Intel. In 2005, development of the EFI specification ceased in favor of UEFI, which had evolved from EFI 1.10. Te UEFI specifica- tion is being developed by the