Windows 10 has been out roughly a month.  And yes, Microsoft is offering up a FREE Upgrade - so who can resist?  Right?

Here is our take on Windows 10 - don't be in such a rush that you have to be one of the first to upgrade!

We have done SOME initial LIMITED compatibility testing with our software and so far everything appears to be running fine.  Some customers have already upgraded (without even contacting us to ASK if our software is compatible).  Some had issues and expected us to fix it NOW - others appear to be running fine.  BUT..........

We realize that many people feel that they want to be at the leading edge of technology and have all of the latest and greatest.  But seriously people - you are all running businesses!  Do you really want to attempt to run business critical software programs and hardware on a system that is brand new right out of the box?  Do you know if the software and/or hardware that you use on a daily basis to run your business is even compatible with Windows 10 or not?

Intuit is stating that ONLY QuickBooks 2015 will run on Windows 10!  See this QuickBooks Support Article

If you use an older version of QuickBooks (2014, 2013, 2012). it *might* work just fine for you.  Then again, it might not work at all and you'll be scrambling to find answers that just don't exist yet. 

Let me tell you about my experience with updating a Windows 7 laptop that qualified for the "Free Windows 10 upgrade."

It took 2 entire days to do the upgrade!

1. Windows 10 is a huge download
2. There were issues with the download mechanism/links from Microsoft
3. I couldn't even download the program while logged into the laptop under a standard user account and no where in the documentation did it state that
4. The actual installation process of the "Upgrade" was extremely long and painful
5. Windows 10 doesn't always like to connect to my Windows 7 desktop over the network

As I said, I've done some preliminary testing with QuickBooks and our software.  Here are my findings so far (remember these are PRELIMINARY!):

• Our software runs just fine on Windows 10
• Our software interacts with QuickBooks 2015 just as it always has without any new issues
• Our software has an issue with QuickBooks 2013.  QuickBooks 2013 itself runs just fine on a single PC in single user mode, but our software has an issue connecting and you get the dreaded 80040408 error message UNLESS you go into the Data Locations tab of the software and in the field that holds the location of your QuickBooks file, you delete that path and type in the word blank.  QuickBooks must then be open in order for our software to read the data.

I have not yet done any testing with QuickBooks 2014 and will update this article when I have.