Windows 7 and Lacerte

What did Lacerte say when you talked to them?

There are no plans to support Widows 7 for the Lacerte 2009 Tax program.

Microsoft's launch date for Windows 7 is scheduled for 10/22/2009 and the Lacerte 2009 Tax program is scheduled for 11/04/2009.  There will not be adequate time to test the Windows 7 release for us to endorse it as an operating system.  For more information and updates, click on the article listed below.

Windows 7 Compatibility with Lacerte Products

My official response from Lacerte:

Windows 7 is not expected to be released until shortly before the 2009 Tax program is released. We won't know if we will be able to support the 2009 programs until we've had a chance to test them with the final Windows 7 version. Historically, beta versions of Windows have been different enough from the final versions that it is not worth the effort to test beta versions.

Windows 7 support may happen as Vista support did:
Vista was released in January of 2007, shortly after the 2006 Tax program was released. Vista is not officially supported for 2006 Lacerte except for the Proforma and Organizer functions, released at the end of 2007. The 2007 Tax program was the first to be considered fully supported (except for the Client Tracker). Prior years generally work using Vista, but have some minor issues. No program prior to 2006 is officially supported-- but we do still try to help with any issues.

Based on that history, I would expect that the 2009 program will not officially be supported until the end of next year at the earliest, with the release of the Proforma and Organizer. However, there is nothing official one way or another, so I could be wrong. If purchasing a new computer between now and tax season, I'd suggest sticking with Windows XP or Vista. (64-bit versions of XP and Vista are expected to be supported beginning with the 2009 Tax program, and previous years will continue to have some issues. Years prior to 2000 are 16-bit programs, and should be expected to not function at all on 64-bit Windows.)

The better question to ask of Lacerte is will they support XPmode.  It's truly a copy of XP running as a virtual machine on Win7.

Even when running a 64bit platform I can run older 16bit software on XP mode.

Turns out Lacerte is supporting Windows 7. http://lacerte.intuit.com/products/tax/requirements.jsp

Ramiro should have added "at this time" :-)

Client tracker is not even supported on vista, let alone windows 7.  Vista has been out for years.  This was a very useful feature and it's lack of support on recent os's will inevitably be a large part of our decision to leave Lacerte if we do so.  The database could have easily been re-coded to use something other than MSDE if ms abandoned it... they announced they were discontinuing the support YEARS ago, Lacerte has had ample time to adapt their program. 

RE: Client Tracker. We "abandoned" a rebuild based on the fact that it's not being used widespread and would require significant resources. Instead, we've been quietly working on what we believe to be a better solution - online office. There is a blurb about it in your renewal newsletter.

I guess if there's a glitch in a program, and nobody uses the program because it doesn't work, the whole thing about "nobody uses it" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 There was no glitch.  It worked very well.

Hah!  So a program which works well and has some, but not wide, acceptance, is scuttled when it comes to upgraded operating systems.  Sounds like a good reason to keep your earlier-than-Windows-7 operating system, if you like the Tracker program.

As nice as official support of the tracker (as opposed to just knowing how to make it work anyway,) it's not worth holding up replacing desktop environments because Intuit could not easily transition from MSSDE to MSSSE.