Which Quicken to Buy ?

Hi, desgnr.

We each have our own opinions on this matter. For me, Quicken Basic was enough, but Intuit discontinued that a few years ago so I've been using Quicken Deluxe each time I've updated since then.

All the necessary functionality is built into the most basic version. The more sophisticated versions add advice and "bells and whistles" that some people need and feel are worth the additional cost. But all the things you mention are in Deluxe.

Except for Certificates of Deposit! In this newsgroup, many of us - including myself - have griped for years that Quicken doesn't know how to properly handle this most basic form of investment. But the premium versions don't do any better at it than the cheapest version, anyhow, so that's no justification for buying the more expensive Quicken.

RC

Amen to that. But it's nice to know we have each other's company. (Doesn't Intuit read this NG?)

And US Savings Bonds.

Managing Your Money had savings bond value by CUSIP for years and how long has it been since MYM died?

Quicken Deluxe 2009 is a fine product. But it will "sunset" one year sooner. If you don't download any data from financial institutions, it may not matter to you.

Regards,

Margaret

Hank, and others, FWIW I also upgrade every year . This is the first year that in hindsight I can say I needn't have bothered. I don't have any problems per se, but neither do I see any (not one!) single difference in functionality that would have made me buy it. I've asked in this forum a few times for people to point me to something new, but have yet (I believe) to have anyone say, "Gee, this is a needed improvement or new function that I think you'd like!".

BUT - will I buy it again next year when Q2011 becomes available? Sure. I might be stupid, but I consider my yearly 'donation' to Intuit for Quicken to be my piece in helping keep the product viable. I don't want to go to an online program. I don't want to go to a spreadsheet if Q dies. I don't want to go to freeware/shareware versions of a personal money manager. It's one of the few 'computer-justifying' applications I use.

So I continue to support Intuit.

I just wish they'd make some functional improvements in Q2011, such as savings bond integration , correct CD implementation, etc. that we've been complaining about for a few years.

I try to stay away from recommendations; and this post is not intended as an exception.

Some of the changes in Q2010 were things that were requested publicly; such as popup registers. So those requesters must be somewhat pleased.

For those who complained that downloaded transactions already in a Quicken register couldn't be matched to other transactions in the register, that is now possible, if one tells Quicken to "Automatically add downloaded transactions to registers".

One, apparent, change ("fix") seems to have gone unnoticed (or I was one of only a few who saw the original problem), but Q2010 is the first version in my memory to be able to "Update Forecast" in the Cash Flow Forecast. Every previous version I can recall (certainly Q2008 and Q2009), failed with the "The number of scheduled bills and deposits has exceeded forecasting's limit. ...." message. I could get that message in a file with very few scheduled transactions.

I have seen a couple of questions recently, that turned out to be bugs in earlier versions, that I found to have been "fixed" in Q2010 (can't remember the specific instances at the moment - searches in the Live Community may turn them up).

[It's amazing how many people claim that bugs never get fixed - when virtually every version fixes multiple bugs. Apparently it's much easier to remember a bug that didn't get fixed than one that did ... or the folks whose bugs get fixed don't report that publicly.]

It seems like the two areas in Q2010 that got a lot of work were the new user interface and the Money conversion. If you aren't an ex-Money user, or you don't really find much improvement in the new user interface, and if your nemesis bug didn't get fixed, you may be less than impressed with Q2010.

With a product as mature as Quicken, I would think it would be difficult to come up with very many "wow!" improvements ... that would pay for themselves.

Years ago, Quicken opened registers in a pop-up window. When this feature went away, I missed it. Now I'm used to my register opening in the main window and simply working with one register at a time. When I tried pop-up registers, I decided I didn't like 'em!

I didn't know about this one, as I don't let Quicken automatically enter downloaded transactions. Will have to give it a try.

Hmm, I didn't even see this, as I use classic menus. Upon switching to standard menus, the icons on my toolbar were reduced to a handful. When I switched back to classic menus, the toolbar was not restored to how I had it. I did manage to add back the few icons that disappeared, namely "Porfolio," "Quotes," and "Budget." (If I lost any others, I didn't notice and must not use them.) ;-)

The "Update Forecast" feature is quite nifty, nice that it works!

Actually I just noticed the other day that the bane of my existence has finally been fixed! :-) This is the "Update Balance" bug that correctly used the current day for the *first* update but then used the date of the most recent update (even if it had been deleted) for subsequent "Update Balance" transactions. It's now once again using the current date for all "Update Balance" transactions! It must have been fixed in the latest R3 Quicken 2010 update, as this is a very recent fix. I'm thrilled!

Yes, it's easy for us long-time Quicken users to forget that this year was a big one for getting former Money users converted to Quicken. ...And developing a decent converter is not a simple task at all.

Agreed.

I also agree with Andrew re his supporting Intuit by purchasing yearly Quicken upgrades. It sure would be nice to have some real competition in personal finance software, but I'd hate Quicken desktop to go away entirely. I sure don't want to use online applications!

Personally I like Quicken 2010. Aside from it now keeping all data in one file and having changed how backup works, that is! :-)

Regards,

Margaret

I agree.

Unfortunately, personal finance software is a very mature product with very limited sales growth potential. Basically, the people that use PF desktop software are using it already and there aren't going to be any substantial new sales.

That, combined with the growth of Web 2.0 and SAAS type of apps (and the cost savings associated with not having to distribute a physical token) are driving the future of PF away from any further investment in a desktop app.

Both Intuit and Microsoft have recognized this. MS tried to get Money users to transition to a desktop/web hybrid, failed and threw in the towel, Intuit is betting on using web based Mint as the future of PF.

I agree.

I try to support the desktop product by seeing if I can help people use it. But, if I couldn't get a free copy of Quicken for being a beta tester or answering questions, I'd be happy to buy a new version every year to put my support in even more concrete terms.

I agree here too.

I knew I was going to dislike those "features" when I first heard about them. There's already been at least one person with price history problems that could most likely have been "fixed", if the price history data was in a separate file, as it used to be. As it is, I think that person is stuck (Validate/SuperValidate have never recovered price history problems, to my knowledge).

And one quite useful product - where there are extremely few products at all - namely, "The QPH File Processor"; has been made basically worthless (for Q2010 and, presumably future versions). The fellow who wrote it reverse-engineered the QPH (Quicken Price History) file format, and was able to read, list, and create .csv files from, any QPH file, without using Quicken. Saved several people lots of work re-creating corrupted history files that contained historical prices that could not be downloaded (imagine trying to manually re-enter years of bond prices).

I just noticed that I overlooked a Q2010 "improvement" which I believe has been asked for by quite a few users, myself included.

When selecting lines in Q2010 reports, the text in the selected lines is no longer obscured by the dark blue rectangle that previous versions used; selected lines can now be easily read through the tan? rectangle that indicates which lines are selected.

This alone may make it worthwhile to upgrade a year early to Q2010. I've always despised that dark blue band on a selected line that effectively masked the data.

I'm glad to know about that.

"John Pollard" wrote in news:hh55c2$gjb$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

I haven't had a problem with the coloured rectangle lately (Q2007 on Windows XP partition of iMac), although I think I did a couple years ago. But I don't remember being able to select more than one line at a time. How do you do it? Oh, just tried it in another report and it works. Any idea why not all reports allow multiple-line selections??

Thanks, vcardx

In the newer Windows versions, selecting multiple (non-investment account) transactions in "registers" and selecting multiple transactions (of any account type) in the Banking > Transactions report (for example) is accomplished with the same techniques used to select multiple files in Windows Explorer.

The selection of multiple transactions in reports is, I believe, intended to be used in conjunction with the "Edit" button found in a couple of Quicken reports. The selection is at the transaction level and once transactions are selected, clicking the Edit button will show you which options are available for those particular selected transactions.