In this video and podcast, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley, CPA, discuss the latest innovations in technology that they’ve seen so far this year at CES and other trade shows and conferences. Watch the video, or listen to the audio podcast below (transcript below):
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Transcript
(Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)
SPEAKERS
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA, Randy Johnston
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab, sponsored by CPA practice advisor, with your host, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley,
Randy Johnston 00:11
Welcome to the accounting Technology Lab. I’m Randy Johnston with my co host, Brian Tankersley, we have been getting so doggone many questions. I thought it was time to talk about a little end user technology with you. Now, if you follow us on a regular basis, early in 2025 we did our traditional ces sessions, and in that ces session, we had explained how Dell had renamed their product lines following the apple approaches. In other words, doing the base plus and premium, along with their no name Pro and Max lines, along with sizes. So when you start looking at a product like the Dell XPS that’s now actually called a Dell premium 12, let’s say and so if you want to do something like the latitude line, it’s the Dell Pro, but it’s also available as Pro Plus and Pro premium, and 12, 1314, 1517, it’s a mess, Okay? And I’m sure as Dell gets this straightened out, it’ll all get better, but I had a practitioner call me this week and said, Look, I’m a Dell buyer, and I need to buy some new equipment, but I don’t know what to buy. I can’t find anything that follows your recommendations on the Dell website. Now Brian and I through the last 10 years or so have come up with a standard set of recommendations year by year by year, and we usually have a PC buyer and a Mac buyer set of configurations. Now, Brian just refreshed his desktop, you know, trying to get ahead of the you know, any potential tariffs that might occur, and we figure there’s going to still be some supply chain shortages, with some disruption here. But the bottom line here is that the PC and Mac buyer profiles continue to need attention. You just can’t buy any old computer. So the core recommendation we started making in 2024 and continue here in 2025 is that if you’re an Intel buyer, you’re looking for core ultras. And if you’re an AMD buyer, seven of the nine chip sets that they make have the AI processors in them. And if you’re a Mac buyer, then you want to be up in the m4 family, and you’re really looking for a lot of the max technology there. Now that’s a long setup, Brian from my side, but you know the I’d like to have your feedback on this. But one thing that some technical people are trying to claim incorrectly is that that you’re in the if you’re in the cloud, you don’t need any of this local processing capability, and that is just so incorrect. You know, you don’t need the local processing capability as long as you don’t run Excel or you don’t use any AI, or if you don’t, and I can kind of keep going, and it doesn’t take very long before you like, wow. But all phones, and we’ll talk more about phones in a minute, have neural processing units. And that’s actually what the core Ultra has in it is a neural processing unit for AI. All right, too much setup, but Brian, what I’m trying to get to is, if somebody called you today and said, What should I buy? What would it be? Because I’ve answered that question at least a dozen times this week.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:59
Well, I will tell you that I agree with the recommendations we have up here. I will tell you that one of the things that I did this time, that I haven’t done in probably 20 years, is build my own machine. So and again, you don’t need to do this. Okay, you should buy something with three years, three years of on site support that’s from one of the big manufacturers, so that your stuff doesn’t go crazy. But I’m doing a lot of reviews, I’m doing a lot of video and I need heavy duty video rendering at a level that I just can’t get that kind of graphics processing unit for a reasonable amount of money. So I spent about $2,000 which includes a $500 video card, a $500 processor and a bunch of other things. I was pleasantly surprised. You know, my my GPU is one of the top 10 GPUs at the time I bought it. It’s a card that takes up three slots in my in my huge, huge case that I bought for it, I’ve got 64 GB. A ram on it. I bought a Ryzen, Ryzen 979, 50x which is a rocket ship, I think 20 cores or something insane, on that, a two terabyte solid state drive. And then I’m running, I’m running four, five external monitors on it. Okay, so it’s a I built the machine that I’ve always wanted. And the thing I would say here is that even for your junior staff people, you know you’re paying your junior staff people 40, $50,000 a year at least. Why are you going to give a Ford? Why are you going to try to save $300 buying just good enough machine for right now, instead of buying them the machine that they want, because they’re going to be joined at the hip with it, and they need to have, they need to have the right specs, so that they get their performance they need, and so that they feel valued. You know, when you give somebody a cheap machine, they don’t feel valued. You know, it says to them, I love you so much that I’m willing to cut corners on what you use every day.
Randy Johnston 06:03
And so some of the cutting of corners that I’ve continued to see in firms, and I had the good pleasure being in many different firms in 2024 and already in some firms in 2025 monitors are also a big deal. But before we switch to monitors, you know, the monitor sends an awful lot of the message, but we have an end of life problem imminent, also, because on october 14 of 2025, Windows 10 will be discontinued, and Microsoft has officially published the prices if you want To maintain Windows 10 security at $61 per year, and they will do that for up to three years. Well, you know, the statistics still show that Windows 10 is a dominant operating system, but Windows 11 is coming along. But the core here is that if you’re a PC buyer, you need to be running Windows 11 and positioning for the next windows. And to do that, you have to be on the right chips so the processor is still critical. You can only buy products that, say, Intel Core Ultra or you have to look at the AMD, and I would pick sevens and nines in most CPA firms for performance, but you want the ones that have the neural processing units and the AMDs are not as evident. And
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:29
I cannot agree with you enough on that. Randy about the about this people, core, I three and I five are dead to you. I threes, I fives are dead to you. Okay, the rise in three, Ryzen five are dead to you. They do not exist. Okay, you are putting a Chevy Vega or a Ford Pinto in the hands of your staff, and you will live to regret it and get to pay recruiting fees on the replacements if you if you do that, okay? So I mean, just the law of large numbers will catch up with you. Okay, so get get them the right tools and the right gear that says that I respect you. I respect your time with your family, and I don’t want you. I want you to have something that meets your needs and exceeds them all the time. Yep.
Randy Johnston 08:17
So that gets us to the GPUs. Now, you heard Brian say he spent $500 on a GPU because he’s doing a lot of video rendering, and I spent $2,000 on a GPU for my machine because he
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 08:32
bought that in the middle of COVID, though. Nope, two years ago. Two years ago. Okay, well, then, yeah, just cheap. I only spent 500
Randy Johnston 08:40
Well, no, the difference is, those darn GPUs have been fallen in price like a rock, okay, but the main point that I want to make here is both of us chose to buy dedicated GPUs, and starting in 2016 I had recommended that you always spent the extra money for a dedicated GPU. But I want you to know here, in 2025 for most of you, you can stop buying the dedicated GPUs, and you can revert back to buying the integrated GPUs. And the question might be, well, why Randy? You know your your material still says dedicated GPU. We are in a position and in a time frame where the integrated GPUs will be as fast as my $2,000 GPU, so I feel pretty good if you buy an integrated GPU that’s just as quick as the one that I’m using, but you don’t have to pay more for it. That’s
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 09:41
I will say, I will say that if you’re going to get an integrated GPU, you need to juice the RAM. Okay, so if you’re going to, if you’re going to get that integrated GPU, just, just for perspective here, okay, my GP, my graphics card that I have, has 64 gigs of DDR, five RAM on it. Okay, so. Or, excuse me, 32 gigs. Okay, and I have 64 gigs for processing. I mentioned this to you here because I want you to understand that I have basically 96 gigs of RAM on that system. Okay, so 64 in my mind, is going to be where you want to be if you’re going to use that integrated GPU as a minimum, and that’s, that’s a lot of RAM, okay, but, but again, I nobody runs 10 applications at once, like we do on five different monitors. Okay, nobody else does this. Okay, so, so I want you to have the hardware to handle this. The problem you and I have is, is three or four fold. Okay, one of them is that we run 10 applications at once. They are pre y, 2k code that doesn’t run well on modern processors because it’s poorly written and requires too many, too many database calls and so forth and so as a result, even though we’re not doing we’re not going to Mars and calculating how to, how to do a 3d rendering of the of a starship thing and and catch a rocket when it comes back to Brownsville or whatever. Even though we’re not doing that, we still need similar processing capabilities, because we’re making all of these 1990s technologies work together in 2025 a way they shouldn’t have to.
Randy Johnston 11:22
Yeah, so you know an easy way to say that many of you are running a tax software, an audit software, an accounting software. You’re running the operating system of Windows, you’re running Excel, you’re running the email, probably outlook. And notice I’m already at six without even thinking about it very hard. Oh, you’ve
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 11:43
not said a browser, you’ve not said research, you’ve not said QuickBooks. You’ve not said you’ve not said
Randy Johnston 11:51
the Adobe PDF. Yeah,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 11:55
I mean, you’ve got, good lord, you’ve got, you know, if you’re running, if you’re running, less than 10 things you’re not working very
Randy Johnston 12:02
so notice that what happens here then when we start talking about RAM, one of the things you might be prone to do or your IT, providers might try to get you to do Brian’s already ranted on this, no threes and fives, but they might try to get you to buy a five instead of a seven or a nine. But also they might try to get you to get by on 16 Meg, 16 gig RAM, or maybe 32 gig of RAM. And we’re saying it’s time to be doing 64 gig of RAM. And what we know is with the major brands, the lenovos, the Dells, the HP, it’s actually a little hard to get a machine that has the 64 gig RAM in it. And so clearly, the next thing that we’re after here is that you need to make sure you’ve got enough bloody RAM.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 12:48
And I’m showing you my task manager here on my machine that has 632 gigs of RAM on the video card. That’s not shown here, but then 64 gigs on the motherboard. And we’re sitting here doing things, and I have, because of add ins and so forth, I’m using 42% of the memory right now. Okay, so if I was, if I was, if I had 32 gigs ram, I’d be maxed out right now. And I’m not really working very hard. Okay, so I want you to get that this, this. Need to do this is, is very real if you if you want things to run smoothly. So then
Randy Johnston 13:25
the next couple of key points for your new generation hardware purchases. Make sure you’re still buying PCI Gen four solid state drives. We still find people wanting to cut a corner and buy a spinning drive, which makes almost zero cents to me, and the days of Thunderbolt five are rolling in now. So we’d see less and less USB A’s and a lot more USB C’s that are coming of age. So there’s quite a number of these types of attributes that are in play now for the Mac buyers, pretty much the rules are all the same. One thing that the Mac buyers have had for some time is DDR five unified memory, and we’re just seeing that unified memory arrival in the Intel world on the core ultras. But fundamentally, you can begin to feel that the Pro graphics, pro risk graphics, that have been in the max for so long that’s also coming of age that we probably won’t be recommending that in the not too distant future, but the hardware specs for the two platforms are relatively the same at this point.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 14:42
So, and I’m, I’m experimenting with Zor and OS, that’s a Linux distribution. It’s not quite ready for prime time, but I don’t know, for those of you that use a hosting service, that it might not show up on recommendation in a couple of years. It’s, it’s actually pretty slick.
Randy Johnston 14:58
Pretty slick. Well, then one. Go back to the monitors, because, again, the buyers this week have been asking me about laptops and desktops, but they’ve also been asking about monitors. And you know, we have recommended curved monitors for some years, the LGs and the HPS and others that have the curved units. I actually answered the question for a practitioner out of Florida this morning, who, you know, was looking for a 32 inch monitor, and said, you know, do you recommend flat or curved? And that’s one of those. It depends questions, you know, if you’ve got a single 32 inch, okay, being flat is fine if you’re going to run multiple monitors. Maybe more. So I pointed that particular buyer to LG monitors, because the LG monitors were running between 188 and $399 on 30 twos, but the 34 inch curved was only about $220 so we’ll time out. You can hear that the bigger monitors are still going to be a lot more money. The smaller monies, smaller monitors last but two and three monitors would be kind of minimum to play. And you can hear Brian is playing with five now we are again watching firms that have bought monitors in the past that bought 20 twos, 20 fours, 27 they’re trying to get by with those smaller monitors, and I think they are affecting people’s productivity, as It turns out. Well, Brian, any other comments in terms of, oh, I guess there’d be another big one, because we’ve talked about mice and keyboards in the past. But what about anything else on the computers themselves?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 16:52
Well, you know, I think the days of Thunderbolt five are here. I think that was a Tom Cruise movie back in the 80s about NASCAR Days of Thunder. So that’s that’s a good thing, you know, the the other thing is that Microsoft has stopped making keyboards and mice, and so a lot of you that liked those, like the split keyboards that that that, again, Microsoft used to make that were ergonomically well formed. Matthias has actually started to make those out of Canada. I actually have one of those. That is, that’s, that’s actually in the box I’m, I’ve that came in yesterday, that I’m going to take, I’m going to get everything going, you know, I don’t know why things would be messed up here after January the 20th, now that we’re, now that we’re on, you know, February the seventh as we record this, but, you know, again, it’s we’ll figure it all out well,
Randy Johnston 17:44
you know. But the bottom line here is these split keyboards. Steve McGowan and I talked about these at some length, and the arm rest, the wrist pad on these very, very soft. And they’re wireless, adapted either USBA or USB C and sub $100 keyboard. So I’m looking at this saying I think this is a highly likely valuable thing for you to consider. So getting the right mouse, getting the right keyboard. This
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 18:19
is my Matthias mouse. I have beat the living crud out of it. It is a wired PBT mouse, and it is the mess, best mouse I have ever owned, and it’s a Matthias product. So I just, I just mentioned that to you here because, you know, we, we talk about things that we use, you know, where we spend our own good green money. And I got to tell you that I’d buy this thing again in a heartbeat.
Randy Johnston 18:43
Yeah, so Brian fixes me once a while when I say things like ASICs, and I’m going to fix him here on PBT, poly butylene, Terra phyllate. It’s a special type of plastic that doesn’t get hooky over time, it maintains its finish. And you know, it’s really pretty stunning how good it is. We find that the other mice that are made from most of the bigs actually over time. You can kind of see your skin oils and other things as they deteriorate. Well, one other big thing that’s happened, and another motivation as we were thinking about things that we need to talk about, was bones have come out with a, you know, their new models. And, of course, the iPhone, you know, new generation, the iPhone 16. A lot of people are buying those because of the apple intelligence Brian got his in Dallas when we were together. And you know, the AI was turned off by default, but it’s now turned on by default in the 18.3 version of the operating system, and later, we are hearing some performance. Issues with the AI turned on. Don’t know the root cause of that at this point, but just want you to be aware that at this point, there’s only a few models of the iPhone that are supporting the AI fully older models, not so much. One thing that might be a little bit of a twist for traditional iPhone buyers is the lightning plug has gone away. It’s now USB C, and that’s for Euro compliance, a European Union, but also the neural processors we were talking about for the desktops and laptops. Guess what? The iPhone 16 have more neuro engine cores in them. So Brian, what’s your experience been like going from your old iPhone to your iPhone 16?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 20:45
It’s a rocket ship. I don’t have to wait on it anymore. And I run 20 apps at once on my phone. I mean, I, I am in and out of my phone all the time, and it’s and I run, I run a two location tracking applications, and, you know, all kinds of things in the background. And it’s it, it keeps up with me and goes fast all the time. And that’s, that’s all I can ask for. Very pleased with how it’s worked out. I actually have a 16 iPhone, 16 pro Max. I did not go up to the one terabyte storage. I did the 512 512 gig storage on it, it the pictures are much better with the 48 megapixel, ultra wide, even the selfies at 1212, megapixels. You know, I thought that some of us were not designed to be seen in fabulous HD, and they actually have some AI photo enhancements so that the pictures of me seem to look a little better than maybe I think they should, because they’re probably being AI enhanced. So it’s, it’s helped me to have some more fabulous posts. I’m not headed for influencer status, but it’s works out well. And again, I got to tell you, I really had to swallow, because it was about $1,700 by the time I paid tax and got the Apple Care for two years and and all of the other things on the mid grade iPhone, 16 pro Max. But you know, my previous one was a 12 pro Max, so I’d had it long enough, and it is now my son’s trusty phone. And if he drops it and destroys it, it is fully depreciated at this point. So
Randy Johnston 22:28
well, you know, as we think about these phones and as we record this particular lab for you, there’s rumors that Apple intends to put out an entry level phone. But as you just heard, you know, Brian’s iPhone purchase is almost as expensive as a typical laptop purchase. In fact, that’s a pretty good rule of thumb right now, for some configurations, the phones are more expensive than your computer, but we believe that you want to be on leased on the pro or pro Max in the iPhone line. Well, people have been also asking about the Google app phones that are out there, and the pixel nine came out last August, and it has performed beautifully for all places that we’ve had. This purchased again, a better neural processor in it, the Google tensor g4 is doing wonderful work on security and AI, and we suspect there will be a pixel 10 using a tensor g5 in 2025 but the price range of most of these smartphones is competitive. There’s no real big price advantage one line versus another, as we see it, it’s really going to be by product size of line.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 23:52
Now catch catch that this one and the iPhone both have the ability to communicate with non terrestrial networks or ntns, okay? And I think that’s important, because sometimes we go places where, like we were, we’re out in the middle of serious nowhere in Texas when we were at that Zoho thing. I have bees in the middle of serious nowhere in East Tennessee, a serious banjo country where you hear Dueling Banjos every time you turn a corner. And I just mention it to you here, because this ability to, you know, when you’re hiking or doing, you know, skiing or doing something outdoors in a rural area, these non terrestrial networks are kind of a game changer. It makes it possible so that you can get help, even in an emergency, and you can send a pin over these things so that people can find you. And that’s that’s another cool thing that they’ve added. Yeah.
Randy Johnston 24:48
Now I think T Mobile is the leader in that area right now, but I do believe that all the carriers will get there. Now, of course, Samsung, last summer, introduced their Z fold six and Z flip. X, both fine products. I’ve had them recommended to them. Number of people and everybody that’s bought those has been happy with their choices. But also a relatively new release is the Samsung S 25 now this we’ve been watching for because it is running on the Snapdragon eight elite, which is the same processor chip that is used in the Microsoft copilot PC. So think we’ve got computer power in a phone, and all the reviews on the S 25 seem very positive, one that I actually read before we recorded today said that, you know, he had set up his phone to be use it as a computer, and he was glad that he did, because he probably won’t go back to a computer. And I thought that was an interesting statement for at least that one reviewer. But it is Snapdragon eight elite running on android 15. So as you if you’re thinking about phones, you’ve got a window here of certainly the first half of 2025, all new generation products are out, and you won’t see new generation products again. I do not believe until much later in the year. So we’d been answering those questions for so many people. Like I said, I’d received about a dozen requests this week alone. I bet you I’ve had 50 requests so far in 2025 tell me what to buy for a computer, what to get for a phone. And I thought just a chit chat between Brian and I might help you. So, Brian, any parting thoughts on this end user equipment?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 26:45
Well, I, I agree with you that, you know you’re going to spend about the same for a computer as you will for a phone. I also agree, you know, again, as you’re as you’re looking at buying a new phone, remember that the cheap ones are still $1,000 and so, you know, the thing I would say again is, you might as well get what you want, because you’re going to spend a lot of time staring at it and a lot of time frustrated if you don’t get, what if you don’t get the right tools? Okay, I’m very happy with my rocket ship computer. I wish I’d done it two years ago. And, you know, I am happy with my purchase of the phone. Now, you know, I had little more, little more capital expenditures in q4 last year than I had hoped to, but I should be set up in pretty good shape here. And I’m about $4,000 in for a new computer and for a new for a new phone. And you know, I I feel very good about the purchases I made, yeah.
Randy Johnston 27:41
Well, you know, when I think about some of the tablets and so forth, because I’d actually gotten in on the early part of the m4 iPad generation, I was hoping that they would be powerful enough to really be a computer substitute. Not quite. Do I use it frequently? Yes, but I’d much rather take my computer at similar price points with touchscreen on it than I would over the iPad, but on the phone side. You know, you really do have to choose an update.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 28:14
Now, I talked about Zorin OS, the Linux distribution that I’m running on one of my older computers. I will tell you, it’s technically more difficult to set up than than Windows on that on that laptop. But I can do I actually you, I intentionally used it at the Acumatica conference, pretty much for everything. And I can do as long as I have an internet connection. I can do everything I need to in a web browser or on the local machine. And so I mentioned that to you here because I think that you know Linux isn’t quite ready for prime time yet as your primary desktop operating system, but there may be things that you do end up running in Linux in the future that you know, where you know, where you run them as containers, or you run them as virtual machines so that you can get access to those things and and it’s, you know, once it’s configured, there is some technical complexity the configuration, but it’s not brain surgery once it, once it’s configured and set up, great way to get there’s a lot of great Automation and batch processing tools you can do in Linux that really make Windows really sing, and you can really use it for for those heavy duty things where you have to do a lot of root processing.
Randy Johnston 29:32
And you know, as you’re saying that, Brian, I’m just thinking, Okay, we get good technicians that get these things, script them, they’ll be configured, you don’t really think about it. And you know, to me, that’s still my core underpinning. When technology is working, you don’t think about it Well, we hope we can keep you from thinking about technology too much. And Brian, I appreciate you listening in on another accounting Technology Lab. We’ll see you again soon. Good day.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 30:02
Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week bye.
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