Hello,
I've been using Microsoft Money since about Money 2000. I haven't upgraded since M04 because M05 & M06 sucked badly. M07 sucks less badly, but still has some problems that I really dislike.
I'm interested in trying Quicken. But I can't seem to find any way to do this without purchasing the product. I've grown accustomed to Microsoft's yearly trial version. (This is how I've known not to upgrade to M05-07.)
How do you guys decide whether or not to upgrade to the next version of Q? How can I figure out whether or not I'll like it without first plunking down cash?
Here are my complaints with Money that I'm hoping Quicken might do better:
- Transaction downloads will expire in M04 on 9/1/2007 (or 3 years after I activated it - I don't know which will happen first). Transaction downloads for M07 have very inspecific terms in the license: "Microsoft provides Online services with the software. It may change or cancel them at any time."
- Money is going more and more "online". Which means that I can accidentally hit some feature and what really happens is it takes me to a web page instead of a feature in money. Very annoying while on an airplane (for example).
- In M07, after I've downloaded all the transactions from my FIs, it takes 5 minutes before I can actually accept any of them. When I try, I get a ridiculous error message. The only solution is to wait.
- In all versions of Money, scheduled bills are linked with the budget. This means that you can end up with some funky errors if you mess with the date of a scheduled bill. For example, if I budget /mo for Bills: Telephone, messing with the date can sometimes resuilt in the budgeted amount being 2x (or more) what you really want it to be. And there is no way to change it in Money. You can export it to excel, tweak it and get the right numbers but you can't ever fix the budget snafu.
My biggest concerns are the first two. Money is changing so much, that I really don't want to upgrade from M04. But at some point, I'm not going to be able to d/l transactions any more and that's pretty critical to me. So as long as I have to make a huge change anyway, why not evaluate Q? Any advice?
TIA.
- Mark