Quicken 2010 - Where Are The New Features?

Sorry to hear that. Please keep us informed if you find new features in the next few days.

I went to Costco today, I was started to visit all the free sample places and pick up a couple of grocery items when the power went out! The entire mall lost power and Costco was rushing everyone out because their emergency power would only run the registers for a short time or something like that?

Anyway, I didn't get a chance to see if they had the new Quicken, would you mind saying which version you got and how much they were charging?

Thanks!

I got Home and Business for $64.99, a lot cheaper than the $99.99 that Frys was charging next door for the same thing.

Anyone who buys a new version of Quicken every year is, frankly, a fool who has more money than brains.

Thanks, I usually use Deluxe. I have to head back to Costco soon as I hadn't finished my shopping when the power failed to I'll check the price then but based on your original post I'll probably wait another year or two to upgrade.

Intuit is still advertising and selling Quicken 2009 on its web site. IIRC, usually the new Quicken is first available from Intuit, and download is available on day 1.

Amazon has very good prices for all versions of Quicken (no download yet), but Staples seems to have even better prices after their "easy rebate."

I guess Intuit doesn't feel the need to hawk the new version of Quicken now that it's competition has retired from the market. :-(

Booo!

Margaret

J> NOWHERE!! Picked up Quicken 2010 at Costco today. The only J> new feature I can find is that the startup sound present for J> many years has been taken out. A real disappointment.

Does any year N release of Q have non-trivial features over N-1? I'ver never seen it, in fact I can't think of any "feature" over the last several years that have been worth it. Which is why I only buy every 3 or 4 years.

Many years ago, yes--almost every year was significantly better than the previous one. In more recent years, Intuit has run out of significant improvements to make, and useful changes are rare.

I do something similar, usually buying every other year.

But before deciding whether or not to buy, I always look at what's new in the new year's version and decide based on that. This year I've been unable to find any info. If it's on the Intuit web site, they've hidden it from me, and I just looked at the 2010 box at Costco, and couldn't find any info there either.

I don't know whether Intuit is hiding the list of changes because they are embarrassed by how little is new, but they are sure turning me off. They are essentially asking us to buy a pig in a poke, and I won't do it.

Q2010 isn't on the Intuit website yet, when it is (probably in a couple of days?) they'll have a "what's new" list somewhere.

I hope you're right. We'll see.

Or wait and see if there's a combo deal with Turbotax later...

I picked up QP2010 at Staples this afternoon. ($89.95 - $40 easy rebate) There doesn't appear to be "new" features so much as GUI changes. BTW, after installing and before converting the data set, Q checks for and downloads updates. In the "About Quicken" window, QP2010 reports it's running R2.

One really nice interface change is that it's now possible to use the "classic" interface, and you're able to turn off both the account bar and the new "action bar." As always, we can turn off the tool bar if we wish. The "action bar" is rather like MS's "ribbon" interface but not as elaborate or as space consuming. This feature allows users to regain some vertical space.

Instead of having the usual several-file data set, all Quicken data is now packaged in the *.QDF file. Prior to upgrading from QP2009, I copied my (multi-year) 20MB file set, bringing it down to 16MB in size. After upgrading to 2010, my data file was 19.9. Automatic backups are no longer numbered FILENAME1 through FILENAME5 (or whatever max number you choose). They're named in the format:

FILENAME-ddMMMyyyy-hh-mm-ss.QDF-backup

Also, manual backups are saved in the format:

FILENAME-ddMMMyyyy.QDF-backup

Additional backups during the same day gets a -1, -2, -3, etc. appended to the end of the date. For example,

FILENAME-ddMMMyyyy-1.QDF-backup

The bug where an "update balance" in the Cash account pulls a seemingly arbitrary date (in my case the date of my last balance transfer) rather than today's date, has not been fixed.

I haven't tested for other bugs, as this one is the most annoying for me. Further, as I've been able to duplicate it on two different operating systems on four different machines (and others have reported the same phenomenon), it seems Intuit could fix this!

Intuit also failed to listen to those of us asking for the return of

2007's (IIRC?) detailed category editor where we could actually see transactions linked to a given category. :-( That was a really useful feature. Now Quicken simply reports that "if" the subcategory is in use when you delete it, its contents will be merged with the category. When I attempted to delete a category, Q warned that all subcategories will be deleted too. I don't understand why Intuit removed this very useful feature, as it was already programmed and worked very well. Now we have to run category reports before doing any major revisions to categories & subcategories. :-( I admit I don't do such reorganizing very often, but it's nice to have it when I need it!

I began using Quicken 3.0 for DOS when it first came out and have upgraded every year. The last few years I've paid full price and purchased Intuit's download. This year Intuit seems to have dropped the ball and is still selling Q2009 on its web site (as of this writing). Amazon was shipping Quicken 2010 today, Premier for $59.99, but no download is available yet. Staples seems to have the best deal, so I snapped it up.

Even though there are no earthshaking improvements, the improvements to the GUI are very nice. There are a few new "summary" pages which help with watching where money goes, etc. Overall, IMNSHO, Intuit has made good use of screen real estate without wasting too much space or crowding screen elements. A lot of options are customizable, so Intuit did listen to us on that count. :-)

Another change is that by default, cents are not shown in the Account Bar. You have to right-click and select the option to "show cents in amounts."

This is the first year that there is no MS Money. I'm sure writing the Money-to-Quicken converter was a major undertaking -- especially if it works well! The GUI improvements are very nice, and I do like QP2010. I'm especially glad I got it for ~$50.

During my cursory review this afternoon, I didn't find any weirdnesses, and the program runs well. I'll be interested to see how it does over time.

Regards,

Margaret

I have a very bad feeling about that. Among other things, security price history corruption will likely now be uncorrectable, unless they made a significant enhancement to Validate.

This will certainly screw up my backup strategy. And make it impossible to sort on name to get backup files in date sequence for those who like the date as part of the name.

It looks like they found a way to reduce the number of opens of backup files though ... but at too great a cost in my opinion.

I assume Restore will restore a file with the name in that format. Will a Restore remove everything from the name but the FILENAME.QDF?

OK, it's there now. Here's the "what's new" list:

As far as I'm concerned, there's not a single significant improvement there.

I won't buy it now, but if, as Robert Neville suggested, there is later a good combo deal with Turbo Tax, I might. But the deal would have to be good enough so that the cost of the two is only slightly more than Turbo Tax alone.

I agree from my personal viewpoint but there might be something that would be useful to someone else?

Probably toward the end of the year or the beginning of next year we'll see the combo deals but I think maybe I'll pass on 2010. HINT: Check Staples and Fry's Electronics, I've usually found the better deals at Staples but that's always subject to change....

Hmm. I do daily updates, so my price history gets pretty big. In previous versions I'd periodically delete my *.QPH file and download a new price history. Now I can't do that. Once upon a time during the Quicken for DOS days, there was a command to "prune" the price history. I don't see any evidence that this feature has been resurrected. It sure would be nice though, considering we can no longer manually delete QPH.

The Restore feature is much friendlier. It gives the option to restore an automatic backup or a manual backup. Once you choose the backup to restore, it gives you the option to overwrite the current QDF or work from a restored copy, leaving the original QDF intact.

This will be a boon to computer users who don't understand the basics of file management ... as well as those of us who support them and their computers!! :-)

Regards,

Margaret

Besides the updates mentioned in Margaret's excellent post, there is another reason for users of Quicken 2007 to upgrade. Intuit's policy has been to discontinue online features after three years. If that policy continues then online downloads of transaction and stock prices, and online bill pay will stop working after April 30, 2010.

Bernie

That's the main reason why I upgrade at least every 2-3 years. But unless there are good new features, I've been avoiding upgrading every year.

Hi Margaret,

Can you double check the above?

I'm now reading that appending the date to the backup file name is still an option in Q2010 ... and that the text, "-backup", is not appended to the backup file name.