12/12/2011

Quicken 2008 Starter Edition Review

Quicken 2008 Starter Edition
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You should ask yourself - "how can a piece of software be capable of generating so much hostility from its user base?" If you can't think up a good answer, go ahead and install Quicken, and you'll have an answer before long.
Some of my favorite quirks from Quicken 2006 & 2007 that I'm glad to see survived the upgrade to Quicken 2008:
Basic arithmetic errors: sometimes, if you edit transactions in the register, every subsequent transaction will get confused about the running total (e.g., change a $10 debit to a $20 debit, and instead of changing the running total by $10, watch in delight and amazement as the running total leaps by thousands, literally thousands, of dollars).
Basic reporting errors: go ahead and open the category list, and click the (very unintuitive) button to generate a report for the category _DivInc. If, like me, you have several years of investment transactions, you're sure to have dividend income, but Quicken will tell you "no transactions for this category." Funny, if you type _DivInc into the global search window, it will bring up all those transactions the report couldn't locate.
File corruption: sometimes, I like to imagine Quicken's routines as a bunch of angry little gnomes running around the traces of my processor and through the registers of my memory. This is because, every so often, the gnomes demand a sacrifice, and offer up burnt offerings of your data integrity to their terrible god of woe. I can't otherwise imagine how downloading QFX data from Hewitt Associates confused Quicken so - in the online center, it shows "number of outstanding transactions: -65,536" Yep, negative 2 to the 16th power of transactions outstanding.
Probably the worst part about Quicken, however, is trying to free your data. If you've got any kind of complicated financial picture (i.e, if you're over 25 years old), you won't be able to free yourself from Quicken's grasp, since the only way to get data out of the program is in QIF format, one measly account at a time. Funny, they don't support _importing_ QIFs, claiming, and I quote, "QIF technology is over 10 years old and was designed for technical support purposes . . . QIF Data Import requires many steps to download, is a poor customer experience and can lead to duplicate transactions and errors." That old technology is good enough for you should you dare to _export_ data from Quicken, however. They're going to make darn sure that you have a "poor customer experience" and suffer from "duplicate transactions and errors" if you try to take your data anywhere else.

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Quicken Starter Edition makes it easy to see where your money is going and how much you have left to spend or save. Quicken brings your online accounts (banks, credit cards, 401(k)) together in one place*. No more hassles of going to multiple sites and remembering passwords: a single password is all you need. See where you are spending your money by category or payee. Use the convenient calendar view of your paychecks, bills and expenses by day and month.

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