I’m using the this formatting (which I understand is correct) but nothing I do will make the font work in ie7 and 8 (emulated using ie9).
It works in Chrome, Firefox, and IE9.
I think this problem could be related to the font licensing: EOT files have an header in which some byte about license information are stored, and if your font has not been licensed Internet explorer could decide to not render at all your font.
As a countercheck try to load a different EOT file, e.g. a free font