News Roundup For 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.