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Notes on QuickBooks 2006 and Vista compatibility

More on the QuickBooks 2006/Vista issue:

George Ou claims Intuit does not deserve a pass when it comes to the compatibility issue with their 2006 and older QuickBooks products.

According to Ou (taken from his ZDNet blog), a QuickBooks representative answered his questions in a telephone call, and explained that Intuit "declined to seek Windows XP certification [for QuickBooks] for all these years and they're just now making the necessary modifications for QuickBooks 2007."

Why should Intuit would worry about Windows software certification? For one thing, the vast majority of computer users run Windows. BusinessWeek.com reports that Windows' closest competitor, Mac, held only 1.9% of the global PC market as of 2005. If your greatest sales opportunity lies in the Windows PC market, then you may want to develop your Windows applications to be as usable, certifiable, and generation-neutral as possible in that market. If it works on XP, make sure it'll work on whatever Microsoft sells next.

There are a handful of ways to develop an application that does not care about the underlying operating system. For example, Sun's Java platform can effectively run applications on almost any PC, irrespective of which OS the application was actually written on. GotomyPC has been running on Java for some time now. Bottom line is it works. So does running web-based applications based on AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) with a SQL back-end, for example. Kiko comes to mind!

The point is that Intuit apparently waited a long time to seek Windows software certification. QuickBooks 2007 is their first foray into honoring the end-user in this regard and should be considered a landmark for the company. Questions remain... Where is their press release? When does Bennett get his ribbon, huh Steve?

I won't venture to say they will keep this architecture, but it's a step in a forward direction. Eventually, the cleverest developers will probably sell hosted solutions. In the case of Intuit that might look like a locally hosted LAMP or ASP.NET/MS SQL back end with an AJAX web-based front end. How do you license an application like that? Who knows. Intuit could pioneer a hybrid license similar to Microsoft's user-based Client Access License. Something like that might need to parse web server logs or perform SQL lookups to audit and authorize access.  They could even integrate the service with the Active Directory if they want to ease the multi-user deployment process.

I hope their is still space in the QuickBooks suggestion box.

QuickBooks 2006 not supported on Windows Vista

I received a courtesy e-mail from Intuit today regarding QuickBooks. Apparently there is a conflict that exists between older versions of QuickBooks (through 2006) and Microsoft's latest Windows Vista® operating system. The e-mail wasn't clear about what extent the conflict changed the QuickBooks experience, just that users may be "adversely affected" if they actually try to run QuickBooks on Vista.

-->  LIMITED USE....

Their Windows Vista Resource Center explains that certain QuickBooks versions will run in Vista, but only under a user account with local administrator privileges, and only in Windows XP compatibility mode. The specific versions affected include Enterprise 6.0, Point of Sale versions, and QuickBooks Services, to name a few. A complete list is hosted on their Vista compatibility page. Anyone using these versions on Vista should make note that they are unsupported on the Vista OS, and that if you run into a problem, you might receive support for known issues only.

QuickBooks 2007 does not have this problem because it is, according to Intuit, "built to run on the new Windows Vista operating system." Because QuickBooks 2007 supports Windows Vista, Intuit is encouraging anybody eyeballing the new system to also grab QuickBooks 2007 to arrive at a supported configuration.

Intuit makes no mention about patching older versions of QuickBooks to add support for the Vista platform, in spite of having patched QuickBooks 2004 and 2005 to add support for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 in December, 2006 (see Internet Explorer 7 Resource Center).

What does this mean for business? It means that if you plan on upgrading to Vista or adding a Vista machine to your bookkeeping system, then you will have to include a license for QuickBooks 2007 in your budget if you intend to run a supported configuration. Intuit offers 12 months of free telephone support regarding installation, upgrades, error resolution, and defects (see Free Phone Support for details). Whether or not they will honor this offer for Vista users not using QuickBooks 2007 is not made clear anywhere on their website. To be clear, the only products supported on Vista are QuickBooks 2007 Simple Start, Pro, and Premier, as well as Enterprise 7.0 and new or updated versions of their other applications and services.

Additionally, since QuickBooks performs irreversible modifications the company file during an upgrade, you must purchase and install a 2007 license on each machine that will access your company file. See QuickBooks 2007 Network Installation Guide for details.

Complete OS support for QuickBooks 2005, 2006, and 2007 is detailed in the QuickBooks Knowledge Base.

UPDATE: More detailed talk on QuickBooks and Vista are available in my next entry, Notes on QuickBooks 2006 and Vista compatibility.