I've run the same dedicated audit laptop for four years — basic i7 with 32GB RAM. The bottleneck is always the PDF extraction, not processing power.
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Dedicated audit laptop — what specs do you run?
Running a 2022 ThinkPad and it's choking on large Excel workbooks when I run multi-site consolidations. Time to upgrade. What are you all running for audit work? Need to handle big spreadsheets + PDF scanning + dual monitors.
ThinkPad P-series or Dell Precision mobile workstation. Minimum 32GB RAM, get 64 if the budget allows — Excel with 16+ sheets of live formulas eats memory like crazy. SSD is non-negotiable. Screen real estate matters too: I run dual 27" 4K monitors docked.
I went the other direction — MacBook Pro M3 Max with 36GB. Runs Excel better than my old Intel machine by a wide margin, and Preview handles PDFs faster than Adobe on Windows. Only downside is some legacy utility portals don't render cleanly in Safari.