CPA Technology Blog

Monitors for Out of the Office and Other Hardware Recommendations

One of the more common questions asked by readers is a request for recommendations of external LCD monitors which can be attached to a laptop so that mobile users have two displays.  This post summarizes current thoughts on how to do this based on my experiences and the experiences of my friends, Randy Johnston, Bob Spencer, and Val Steed.  Together, we teach hundreds of CPE courses to accountants across North America each year, and also make recommendations at TechnologyBestPractices.com, CPAFirmTech.com, TotallyPaperless.com, and AccountingSoftwareWorld.com.  Many of us are also active consultants with CPA firms nationally either independently or through organizations such as NMGI.

The K2 CPA Firm Tech team members had an e-mail discussion re: our personal opinions on portable monitors for CPAs about three weeks ago. 

• Some of my co-workers @ K2 (Val, Randy, Bob) are recommending an HP 21.5” touch screen monitor – the HP L2105tm 21.5”($299).  Personally, I think this one is too big to lug around (14.1 lb (6.4 kg), Dimensions (w x d x h) 20.2 x 9.1 x 16.5 in).  The one I mention below is smaller, but does not have the multi-touch touch screen, and is also only an 18.5” display instead of a 21.5” display, resulting in much less work area, but my recommendation is a little over half of the weight of the HP model.  Info on HP model L2105tm is available on the HP website.
• Due its the much smaller form factor (17.72" x 11.65" x 2.83", Weight 7.94 lbs), I’m recommending the Samsung LD190N monitor for staff and seniors when out of the office  ().  It is a 18.5” LCD (1360 x 768 native resolution), and has a 5ms response time with decent contrast.  I purchased one of these for my own use a few weeks ago.  Some things you should know about this display:
  • This WILL NOT fit in my backpack sized for a 17”notebook, so I haven’t taken it on the road yet.
  • The monitor is NOT HDCP capable, so you will not be able to play Blue Ray DVDs on it, and only has an analog VGA cable input.
  • Since this one is only $119 vs. the $299 of the HP above (the HP is clearly a superior monitor, but it’s big, you could always buy a few of the Samsungs, and then see if you need a larger display and the touch interface. 
• You might try to find a good deal on 17” monitors, although I don’t know of any specific models to recommend, as most everyone is going to something bigger these days.

Screen protection will be a concern for most users, as there is no protection provided with either of these displays, and they will be very easy to crack.  I plan to protect my screen two ways:

• I plan to use black velcro (matches the framing on the monitor) to attach a trimmed corrugated plastic For Sale sign you can buy at Lowe’s/Home Depot and use it as a hard piece to protect the screen.
• I will see if any of my existing bags will hold the monitor so I can avoid purchasing a special case for it (I have about 10 laptop cases from throughout the years).

There are a number of alternatives for a case, including:

• For the smaller Samsung and other 19” class displays, there’s a closeout bag by Shuttle (gaming PC manufacturer) which is designed to transport their discontinued XP19 - 19” monitor (which had a piece of plexiglass over the LCD) from place to place.  I don’t have one at this point, but it looks pretty interesting, and is $60 @ Directron, an online closeout store.
• One firm reported that they use the CaseAce LCD harness to transport monitors and shield the screens from damage.  This is a cover shaped like a messenger bag (with the bottom open) to let you carry your monitor by the handle mounted on the top of the bag.  (Note: This harness appears to not be water tight, so you may want to also carry a trash bag with you to seal the monitor in the event of very heavy rain).  There is a larger version of this LCD harness which will let you carry monitors up to 24”. 
• Another firm reported that they used contact paper to reinforce the original packaging which came with their monitors and are using these boxes on the infrequent occasions when they need to move from site to site with their LCD.

Finally, some users will want to have more than one 22” monitor available in the office.  There are a number of solutions which will let you run the second external monitor (e.g. laptop LCD + 2 External LCD’s), including:

• VillageTronic’s viBook USB to DVI adapter.
• Arkview’s USB to DVI adapter
• Some docking stations

I would NOT purchase more than one of any device until you test it and verify that the drivers will not conflict with your applications and operating system.  I have had numerous issues with drivers for these items in the past, and some of the ones you can purchase at retail in office supply stores have software which will hang up when you try to run the PC without the attached monitor – which defeats the purpose of having a laptop.

FREE WEBCAST 12/9/2009 @ 2PM - On a personal note, I’m presenting a free one hour webcast on Gadgets with Greg Lafollette at 2pm EST on Wednesday, December 9th.  I hope you will register and attend.  The webcast is sponsored by Sage.

News Roundup for July 22, 2009

After a long absence, the CPA Tech Blog is back.  It’s been a busy last three months, but there’s lots of good stuff to discuss.

• The Release Candidate of Windows 7 is out, and I really like it.  I’ve been running the 64-bit version of it as my production operating system for a while.  The only major issue I had was a shared networking issue with VMWare, and I think I’ve got that all fixed now.  I’ve got one device that has a driver issue, but I seem to be able to work around it by running an XP virtual machine, so it’s not a show stopper.
• The Community Technical Preview (e.g. geek beta) of Office 2010 is out, and it promises browser-based access to Microsoft Office, better integration with SharePoint and Groove (now called SharePoint Workspace), and many other things.  As I write this, I’m installing Office 2010 into a virtual machine (VM) for some testing.  Lots of good material here.
• There are many new tools to discuss, including some from CCH, ThomsonReuters, and Intuit.  The releases are too numerous to mention here, but if you follow my Twitter feed (twitter.com/bftcpa), I’ve listed most of the new things there.
• There have been some significant changes in the VAR space, with the MIS Group, a huge Sage VAR, discontinuing operations, and many others folding or significantly downsizing their operations.
• Many industry publications have changed personnel or folded.  Source Media folded Accounting Technology and Practical Accountant into Accounting Today, and there are many personnel changes at traditional and new media outlets all over the place.  (As a side note, the whole print media business is going nuts right now, as the distribution channels seem to be changing, and the economy is having a significant impact on the ability of advertisers to pay for things….

On a personal note, I have some new gadgets to mention to you, the gentle reader.  Those include:

• Palm Pre: Love the screen, new OS and speed.  Needs more software, an improved keyboard, and better battery life.  I’ll rate this one 4 stars out of 5 (My iPod Touch got the same rating, so I think it’s probably comparable to the iPhone before we start talking about AT&T’s phone service…. nuff said.)  The Touchstone inductive charger is really nice, and I highly recommend it for pretty much everyone.  I love that I can charge my phone without having to plug in any cables – very cool.
• Seidio makes a really nice external charger for numerous cell phone batteries.  This is one of the better gadgets I’ve bought lately, especially since my Palm Pre has “issues” with its battery life.  (These guys are also supposed to be creating a new battery that has twice the battery life of the OEM battery.  No word yet on whether or not it will work with the Touchstone inductive charging device).
• I have started running two external monitors off of my laptop using a VillageTronic ViBook USB-based video card ($129 from HarmonicInversion.com).  It’s small, runs great, and with the exception of some very infrequent freezes in the video, it’s wonderful.  Now, I wouldn’t try to do video editing or anything crazy with it, but on my fast system, it’s doing super for Word, Excel, document imaging, Adobe Acrobat, and other routine office tasks.

I will probably be acquiring a new SonicWall UTM device for my office, as well as one of the USB monitors which were all over CES this year (waiting on either the touchscreen models to become more available, or for more models to become available).

I’ve written articles which have been picked up by various state CPA society magazines as well as The Progressive Accountant lately, and I’m still developing those podcasts mentioned earlier in this space.  More to come in the future.

Got Tick Marks?

One of the more common things I am asked from people who are implementing a document management system is how they can include their “tick marks” in their documents.  My usual responses are to look at PDFlyer or Tick, Tie & Calculate in Acrobat (or alternatively, create your own stamps), and to either use graphics or a symbol font like wingdings in Word, Excel, and everything else. 

My wife and I recently started using SendOutCards to send some of her follow up correspondence as part of her work as a mortgage loan officer.  One of the things you get with SendOutCards is the ability to create a custom font based on your handwriting.  I have sent mine off, and am somewhat anxious about what it’s going to look like when it is complete (my handwriting really, really stinks).  This effort, however, has opened my eyes to how easy it is to create your own, personalized font to do things like tick marks and other symbols.  While you can purchase applications for $50 to do this, the geniuses over at LifeHacker had a great post in February which mentioned YourFonts, a web service which does this for you for free.  You fill out a form, scan it, and it encodes the stuff you wrote as images in a Windows-compatible TrueType font.

If you needed to create a font for tick marks, you could simply create your own font using this tool, and instead of making the letters correctly, you could assign a tick mark to each character on your keyboard.  And it’s free.  You will need to share your tick mark files with anyone who would print out your documents, and will probably want to render the final versions to PDF (and embed the tick mark font in the PDF files), but if you do this, it’s a fairly elegant solution to one of the more vexing problems associated with annotating documents.

Tech News and Notes - Week of 7/17/2008

I'm behind on reporting on the gadgetry in my office, so here are some updates on things :

• I've been working with my  Scansnap S300 for the last few weeks, and I'm really impressed with it.  Although I would like to have TWAIN or ISIS compatibility, it's an amazing little device, and well worth the $260 it costs on Amazon for this piece of hardware.  It has only jammed twice after running hundreds of pages through it, including a couple of hundred thermal receipts for an expense report.  (and in one of the two jams, I had forgotten to take the staples out of the original - Doh!
• I seem to be on a LOT of conference calls lately, and have been using a Plantronics Calisto Pro Phone ( Cordless, DECT 6.0, Bluetooth, speaker phone, and it comes with a really good headset).  If you're a Skyper, this thing even has a USB connection to your PC so you can use it for your VOIP application.  I also really like the range on this thing- in the spring (before my A/C was running all of the time), I could use this item connected to my Jawbone headset (which has noise cancelling) to talk to people while taking in the great outdoors in my yard.  [Don't tell anyone that working for yourself has perks like that....]
• I mentioned that I had converted my home internet connection to TDS' fiber optic (PON) service, and I've also got their digital TV offering.  Verdict: The fiber optic internet rocks, and the digital TV is also very good - but seems to be in early implementation.  Once they start offering On Demand and DVR's in September, the TV will be up to speed with the rest.  The TV service reminds me a lot of dish service, in that there is a slight delay between when you select a channel and when it is displayed on your PC.  It doesn't take long, but it's just long enough to be a little annoying.

A few other things came to my attention earlier this week:

• The Association of QuickBooks Technologists is having a conference this fall for CEO's, CFO's, IT Directors and Management Consultants looking to streamline business processes and who want to learn more about Business Solutions designed for QuickBooks users. The conference is in Deerfield Beach, Florida on October 16, 2008, and appears to be reasonably priced.  (There are worse places to be than South Florida in October).  For more information contact AQBT founding member Dawn Scranton.
  
• The cobranding I discussed a couple of weeks ago has been very interesting, and offers some neat potential marketing tools for mid-sized and larger CPA and bookkeeping firms.  I've actually considered creating a CD for clients with the trial/free versions of Peachtree, OA Express, and QuickBooks SimpleStart along with an HTML page which has links to my site..... really interesting stuff.  This is something I would look into if I was at a firm looking to grow their accounting software consulting business.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Gadgetreviews and news items of note FYE 2008-07-17, Office Accounting, AQBT, Peachtree, QuickBooks, TDS, Fiber Optic Internet Access, PON, Plantronics Calisto Phone, Scansnap S300

Notes from the Road and Travel Tips

We're in our second quarter "mini busy season" here with K2, and the last few weeks have seen us present technology conferences in Connecticut, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Oregon (where I will speak today).  We're also preparing for our first CPA Firm Technology Symposium in Overland Park, KS on 6/10.  Since this is a new, all-day course, I've been working with Val Steed, K2's CEO, on prep for this course so we have plenty of material and other collateral to help our participants use technology in their firms as effectively and efficiently as possible. USA Today (normally just good for recycling, but there are exceptions) has a nice article this morning on how to pack for a long trip, as well as some tips for the chronic overpacker.  Doug Dyment, the creator of OneBag.com (a site dedicated to traveling light) does a nice Q&A on how to pack for a trip.  Since I'm headed to Connecticut (two teaching days), Montreal (Canadian GP), and Kansas City (three teaching days) in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be reading this article with interest. There is also a nice chart in the article which lists who will have to pay to check bags with various airlines.  Fortunately, the other airlines have not been as quick to match American's policy of charging for the first bag (although they are almost universally charging for the second checked bag.)  One of the few (hard earned) benefits of being a super-elite frequent flyer (Delta Platinum Medallion, Skyteam Elite Plus) is that I can check up to three bags for free.  While I very rarely use this benefit, it was nice to be able to handle all of the bags for free for my two companions when I went to Florida for the Memorial Day weekend. Some travel links readers may want to use for their upcoming trips:

• TripIt - www.tripit.com - This site will create itineraries from your confirmation e-mails from the various sources and put them into an iCal feed which you can add to Google Calendar or Outlook 2007.  You can also have "friends" on the site and share info with them or see when you will be in the same area as one of your far-clung cronies.
• Sidestep.com - This is a meta-search engine for travel which will look on numerous travel sites for a particular trip, and then allow you to find the best match of price and schedule for your trip.  While most people use this for airfare searches, the car rental searches are where I tend to save the most money, and they also offer other category searches as well.  I can't recommend this one highly enough.
• Google Transit - lets you plan trips using numerous public transportation systems around mostly North America and Europe.  While this is a new service, I'm expecting that the depth of integration with organizations and schedules is going to be really good on a going forward basis.  I'll let you know more once I've used the schedules for Montreal on my trip there next week.

I'm also in the process of implementing a hosted document management system for my little firm.  I actually installed the client software yesterday, and am now populating the database with a few documents until I can get a feel for how best to organize my documents (which don't really fit the typical organization structure for a CPA Firm, since I do so much oddball consulting).  I'll report more on this effort after I do the second revision of tags, categories, and other ways to implement this system.  K2 has some good tips on their Totally Paperless site, but I'm working to capture the various steps and factors considered as part of this whole process in a document which can be used for either blog content or teaching classes.  I'm also working with this vendor on integration with portals for secure interchange of information, and I hope to be able to write more about this in the near future.    

Tags: Travel, Road, Sidestep, Google Transit, Document Management, DMS, Packing, Suitcase, Airlines, Carry-on

The Future’s So Bright, We Have to Wear Shades

There’s a very interesting article by Andy Kessler on the editorial page in the Wall Street Journal this morning which discusses the coming war in technology; the link is here.  While Microsoft and Google are the armies currently fighting the skirmishes around the future of technology, this is really simply a proxy war about how we will use technology in the future.  Just as there are different methods of transporting goods around the country (think: rail vs. truck vs. airplane), there are also different models of computing
(browser vs. local vs. mobile).  Processing power (thanks to Moore’s Law), bandwidth, and wireless technology have changed the level of real time information sharing.  HP has even come out with a laptop (HP Compaq 6720t) which is designed to be used as a thin client into corporate systems and which doesn’t even have a hard drive!.

Many accountants are rightly concerned with the security and information control implications of using online services for their
mission-critical applications.  While these are legitimate concerns, the reality of our digital infrastructure has generally made these concerns less of a problem now than in the past.  High speed internet is getting faster.  Last week, I received a flyer from my local telephone company offering a fiber internet connection which would have 25Mbps down/10Mbps up connectivity to my home. 

While I’m still mulling over whether or not I really need that fast a connection at home since my current connection is 10Mbps down/1Mbps up through my cable provider, it’s really interesting that this level of service is now available in Knoxville, Tennessee, which, although a nice-sized city, is admittedly not one of the first cities you think of when you imagine fast internet speeds.  My current internet connections (cable and Sprint wireless) continue to impress me with the speeds which are possible; my cable connection averages 8 Mbps down, 970K up whenever I test the speed, and my wireless connection (backup) has been running over 1.1 Mbps down/300K up on the road lately with EVDO Rev A. 

Anecdotal evidence suggests that telecommunications and other utilities are also more reliable than we have had in the past.  Where I used to reboot my router and modem every morning, I now go for months without rebooting these devices, and they seem to just work now.  My collaboration with others within K2 suggests that their experiences are similar:  I have noted only two critical outages among the team during the first four months of the year.  When I started my career 15 years ago, we would have two or three power outages during the busy season which would shut us down and cause us to lose work.  While utilities aren’t sexy, they certainly seem to have made significant improvements in the last generation.

If you haven’t tried some of the latest evolutions in Web-based applications, here are some for your consideration:

• Gliffy – Flowcharts on the Web
• QuickBooks Online
• Microsoft Office Live Small Business and OfficeLive Workspace
• Bill.com – Electronic workflow and AP/AR processing
• Copanion GruntWorx – An online application for scanning and organizing tax returns
• XCM – Workflow automation for CPA Firms
• Google Apps – An office suite which allows Web-based collaboration and processing of spreadsheets and word processing documents.  These documents can be taken offline with an app called Google Gears.
• Thomson and CCH offer hosted versions of their CPA firm applications.  Thomson’s offering is called Virtual Office CS, and CCH’s offering is called Global fx.  (Both have simplified life for many firms who want to quit applying updates and administering servers in their offices.)
• Capital Confirmation makes audit confirmations paperless and electronic (and really fast as well).
• Jungledisk – An application installed on your PC which creates an encrypted storage drive using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) .

While the future direction of computing hasn’t been finalized, there are really interesting things happening in technology, and some things (like those pages or CD’s for reference materials) are on the way out. The future appears to offer more choices for how tools are delivered to users, which will make it much easier to work from anywhere – even a condo in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Brian Tankersley is a CPA and CITP based in Knoxville, Tennessee.  You can learn more about him at www.bftcpa.com.

Tags: WebApplications cloud versus local accounting CPA space

Mobile Broadband Kicks it Up a Notch

As many of you know, I am a loyal (paying) Sprint customer, and have used a variety of their cards since they rolled out EV/DO service about a year and a half ago. I am usually home a lot during the winter months, and have recently started venturing out of my winter hibernation cave to go back to my life of roaming the earth and through it searching for the best accounting technology. I have noticed a significant increase in the speed of Sprint’s mobile broadband service since I last talked about it last year. Where your average city would have a download speed of 500-700K and an upload speed of 70K last year, I’ve been seeing speeds of 1.7-2 Mbps down and 200K upstream. Since these are as good or better than those received by low end DSL, Ma Bell has to be shaking in her boots(!).

Last Result:
Download Speed: 2111 kbps (263.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 282 kbps (35.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Download Speed: 1631 kbps (203.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 218 kbps (27.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Download Speed: 1654 kbps (206.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 220 kbps (27.5 KB/sec transfer rate)

BTW, I did these tests at 7:15A, a time when many road warriors are using their aircards to check e-mail and surf the internet in preparation for another busy day on the road. Website used: http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest

An Update from the Road

So I'm on the road this week.... I wanted to let you know that I was a conscientious objector to CES this year.  Really, if I want to hang out with 100,000 of my closest friends & neighbors, I'll stay home and go to a football game.  Seriously - maybe next year.  For those of you looking for gadget guidance, I'll refer you to my friend, Dr. Bob Spencer, who is carrying the torch for the skeptical gadget fan, and has posted some of his observations from his trip....er... pilgrimage... to Vegas for CES.  Heck, he even got a free dinner out of the deal from Greg LaFollette, so if they're giving away free dinner, I may have to go next year (chortle, chortle....)

I had the privilege of getting an update from some software vendors yesterday, and I'm excited about the progress that many of the vendors are making in updating their products and otherwise finding new and innovative ways to meet the needs of the profession.  Once much of the stuff is released from NDA's, I'm going to have a lot to blog about.  One trick I'll recommend to those of you who spend much time in webinars is to set up your trusty LCD projector to display your webinar on the wall of your hotel room.  I did this yesterday in Syracuse, NY for a day of webinars in the Doubletree here, and it really helped me keep from going blind staring at a tiny screen.  I just closed in my garage as a home office (sorely needed - I was cramming about 300 sq ft of stuff into a 150 sq ft office.  I now have at least 300 sq ft to work with, and I can pare down the stuff a little bit.  I'll send some pictures once I get the desk thing worked out, pics hung, etc.  It's a pretty nice little space, and it has 14 gigabit ethernet jacks in the wall.... it's nice to spend a little extra on the home network for a change.

[On a personal note, today my one year anniversary of my lap roux-en-y gastric bypass, and I would recommend it to any of you dear readers who have a BMI high enough to qualify (usually 36+).  I'm down 130 pounds, and have started the walk-jog thing at the hotels so I can get ready for a possible run in the 2008 NYC marathon (yes, I am aware that the original marathoner dropped dead after running 26.2 miles - but it has to be done!).  While it has a lot of ups and downs (the marathon), I'm looking forward to getting this done before I finish being 40 at the end of 2009.  Thanks to all of you who have offered your prayers and support over the last couple of years of this journey - the trip seems to get better and better each year.]

(blogged from the Outback Steakhouse in Syracuse, NY (where I ate a very tasty tiny steak)on my personal laptop and my Sprint aircard)

IL Technology and Business Solutions Show

I made some last minute changes to my presentations at the Illinois Society of CPA's Business and Technology Solutions Show, and promised my attendees that I would post some notes to my blog with PDF's of the presentations and links to some of the sites I discussed during the sessions.

1. Upgrading your Computers (Vista/Office 2007/Hardware Update)

• Download Upgrading.pdf

• Technology Recommendations (from Randy Johnston's company, Network Management Group, Inc.) [Disclosure: I do some paid consulting for NMGI] - Updated quarterly, this site has recommendations for workstation specs in business situations.  I always check this site when purchasing gear.
• SalesCircular - Compares sales prices on electronics and appliances from weekly sales circulars in Illinois.  OK for home hardware, probably not OK for business hardware.
• I mentioned that I upgraded my new laptop out of the box to 4GB of RAM.  I purchased the RAM from Newegg.com, one of my favorite sites for "geeky" items.  (No, I don't get any commissions if you click through - I just like the company.)

2. Small Business Servers (Overview of What is Going on in SMB Server World)

• Download SMBServers.pdf

• ScorpionSoft - Maker of Two Factor Authentication devices for SBS and Remote Web Workplace. (thanks to the lovely and talented Susan Bradley for this link)
• Microsoft SBS Page
• Microsoft Windows Home Server Page

Treo 650's..... a Verizon T650 for Sale

As I mentioned two posts ago, I just got a Sprint Treo 755p as a replacement for my Treo 650.  Same device, more RAM, faster internet.  I have already sold my Sprint Treo 650 (that was fast!), but have a friend who has a Treo 650 for Verizon which is available.  I'm not trying to turn my blog into a swap meet, but if you're interested in this Verizon unit, please send me an e-mail (spam@bftcpa.com) and I'll forward your note of interest to the guy who wants to sell his phone.  Seller is a board member of the Tennessee Society of CPAs, so he's fairly particular about his gear - if I needed one for Verizon, I'd buy it.....

Thanks, and best regards - Brian