Anyone running Quicken (PC Version) on a Mac?

Have been running QWin on an iMac for over 3 years now. Using Lion/Parallels7/WinXP - you do need a copy of Windows along w/ Parallels. Have both QWin 2010 and 2011 installed at present. Also just recently installed QEM.

Have been quite satisfied with this arrangement. System had gotten 'sluggish' in recent months - following upgrades to Lion OS and Parallels7. Based on comments in various Q&A forums, Parallels is a memory hog and recommendation is to max out memory on the Mac. Just recently upgraded the memory from 2GB to the max of 4GB and this restored the responsiveness.

You do have alternatives;

Boot Camp is included with the Mac OS. Requires copy of Windows. You reboot to get back and forth between Mac and Win ops. [Doesn't sound like fun!]

VMWare is a competitor to Parallels - requires Windows.

CrossOver doesn't require Windows. Don't know much about it but recall seeing one post by a QWin user successfully using it. You should verify that it will run the particular Win Apps desired.

Thanks. The shut down/reboot part of boot camp is exactly why I think the Virtual Machine would be much better.

I knew I'd need Windows. I went to the Apple Store this afternoon & just found out about VMWare. They didn't mention CrossOver, but I'll check that out, esp. if it avoids a copy of Win.

The Apple tech said he thought Q was light on the resources, but your experience sounds different. If I buy new, I plan on going w/ a 4GB MBAir.

It looks like it's going to be a rather expensive trial run. New MBAirs are north of $1k & I'm absolutely amazed at how they retain their value! ebay says original MBAirs (3+ yrs old) sell for at least $750. At that rate, I'm thinking that even if I buy new & don't like it, I can sell it w/o losing much skin.

Looks like CrossOver is a Windows emulator (WinE), which opens the door to bugs that I would expect by trying to emulate something instead of really doing it. They give themselves "medal colors" Gold, Silver, Bronze for the apps that work; Red for apps that don't. They at least appear to do a pretty good job of telling you what works & what doesn't and a quick perusal of their discussion boards indicates they're pretty diligent about pursuing issues. Here's a link of "medals" narrowed for Quicken apps:

So, it sounds like $170 ($120 Windows + $50 VMWare) for more stable experience vs $60 + bugs for CrossOver.

CrossOver's got potential, but I'm thinking it's just not mature enough yet.

The incremental $100 is probably worth it considering that I'm sure I'll encounter other Windows apps that I'd want to run.

I've been running this way for quite some time as well, since VirtualPC on the G5 in fact. Parallels and VMWare are the two commercial ones to consider, but it's also worth trialling it with VirtualBox, an open source virtualisation package.

I used Crossover for a bit but had font hassles - admittedly I was running with quite an old version of Quicken though. There's also Darwine, another port of WINE to the Mac like Crossover, which is free though harder to configure.

I use VMware myself - my reason is that VMware is fond quite often on PCs or Linux, so I can transport the same virtual machine and use it on any platform. Parallels often seems to get the nod on raw performance, though this changes once every few months as new versions of each come out.

Cheers, Ian