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This Week in the iNews:

▲ LUNCH & LEARN ON BUSINESS VALUATIONS

▲ IRA CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTIONS

▲ TECH TIP WEEKLY – MS WINDOWS 7

▲ Lunch & Learn Series Program – Business Valuations

Please join us for our upcoming Lunch & Learn Series Program on Business Valuations at noon on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 in the Prangley Marks, LLP lunch/conference room, presented by Leslie N. Prangley, III, CPA, CVA, and Harold A. Marks, CPA, CVA.

Please contact mripley@pmcpa.com or call (616) 774-9004 to reserve your spot.

Complimentary lunch, program and parking provided.

Seating is limited.

▲ IRA Charitable Contributions

An individual is allowed to exclude from income up to $100,000 for qualified charitable distributions from an individual retirement account (IRA) or a Roth IRA, which otherwise would be includable in income. Joint tax return filers may exclude up to $200,000 as long as no more than $100,000 is from any one individual IRA owner. Under present tax law, 2009 is the last year this provision is available.

To qualify, the individual making the contribution must be at least 70-1/2 years old, the distribution must be made directly to the charity by the IRA trustee and the taxpayer cannot claim it as a charitable deduction on their tax return.

▲ TECH TIP WEEKLY - MS Windows 7: Some of the Good, the Bad, and the Yet to be Known - From the of Marty Grausam, CPA, CFE, CISA

D-Day is approaching, that is to say Microsoft’s newest operating system will ship to store shelves as an upgrade, and will be preinstalled on new PCs starting on Thursday, October 22. The life of Windows Vista is nearly over, although many thought that it should never have been born!

Win 7 actually does fewer things than Vista did. Win 7 supposedly feels like the “anti-Vista”! Win 7 is supposed to be designed to stay out of your way so that you can get things done; a pleasant thought! It also is addressing some of the on-going annoyances, like ‘User Account Control’ and the ‘System Tray’ of earlier versions of Windows.

Some reported Goods, Bads, and Not So Sure Yets …..

The Good

Win 7 is less piggish – tests have shown that it will run on most systems (Vista did not when first released) including those allegedly underpowered, pint-sized computers known as netbooks.

Taskbar and System Tray (being renamed the Notification Area), which have been basically the same in Vista as was in way back in Windows 95 have been reinvented, with reportedly pleasing results.

Libraries now collect your files – all along Microsoft has strongly urged us to store our files in one place, a folder called My Documents, and some of us have and many of us haven’t. A new feature called Libraries now provides virtual folders for documents, photos, etc.

The Bad

Homegroups are supposed to be a way to share folders of documents and other files between PCs across a network. However it is reported that Microsoft’s implementation leaves a lot to be desired, as well as the fact that they only work if all PCs involved are running Windows 7.

Running Windows Update under Win 7can still shut you down. Enough said.

You cannot update to Win 7 from Win XP; you will need to start all over, i.e. your XP hard drive will be wiped clean when 7 is installed and you will have to reinstall all of your applications, settings, etc. etc. In the long run this may be the preferred way anyway since all existing problems from XP are made gone, but it doesn’t make the switch any easier.

The Not So Sure Yets

How bad will compatibility issues be? That is to say that incompatible drivers and software problems will sure to evolve as millions of installations of Win 7 are made.

Win 7 is the first Windows version from Microsoft with special support for multitouch input, for example, if it notices that you’ve opened the Start menu with your finger rather than the mouse pointer, you may see a different version of the menu. This feature opens up Windows to the newly expanding touch-screen PCs, notebooks, and netbooks, but how it will fully perform is still to be seen.

So, a wise sage may take this all in and say, “Get Windows 7, but only when you are ready. It will be an improvement over whatever version of Windows you are using now, but do it on your own schedule.”