Larry.  You are on the right track to talk to other hosting users.  We "tested" it for part of the offseason last year when this thread started and unfortunately went a different direction entirely that ended up being very bad.  After that experience, I wished we had stayed with hosted Lacerte for the actual season to see how it went.  (At the time we were experiencing some speed issues with hosted QB desktop files and my team just wasn't having it so we jumped from the Rightworks platform last fall in an effort to settle into the right thing before tax season. No major issues with Lacerte speed, just QuickBooks at the time.) 

What is definitely missing is local support and overall lack of understanding on the part of the techs in trying to nail down speed issues...it always came back to the system needing to be upgraded, etc. and we knew the experience was somehow hung-up elsewhere, not simply fixed by throwing more RAM at it.  (Hosted environments can get snagged up quickly with syncs and other things running in the background for AV, malware, Google, OneDrive, etc.)

We are now with a great local IT firm that hosts our server and provides support as needed.  We finally feel like we are "getting what we pay for" - we are paying a LOT but getting a lot in return.  I wouldn't count hosted Lacerte out, just keep in mind that local support is still needed.  Good luck!