I keep hoping... | Quicken 2008 Home & Business

Save your PATH before installing!!! | Quicken 2008 Home & Business

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	• Quicken 2008 Home & Business Windows \| Intuit, 2007 view larger image
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Home and Business

It is good, but I am still learning. There were no directions included in the product.

I keep hoping...

I'm a Quicken Veteran. Been with them since 1990-91. Originally using it on a Mac, but then moving over to the PC a few years later.

The early Mac version was solid as a rock. I used to rave about how it had to be THE best software purchase I have ever made. I told everybody about it. I was a fanatic. It was simply awesome. Software that did what it said it would do, did it well, was very intuitive and was a model of what software should be like. As a software developer myself, it was a great role model.

I think the last version of Quicken that I was happy with was Quicken 98. Since then, I've just gotten more and more frustrated with the product. Generally, it works for me (I'm on 2007 right now), but the interface is not as simple and intuitive as it used to be. I've got plenty of screen real estate, but Quicken forces me to use it in a very wasteful way. I would really like to have more than one account up at a time. (Does anybody else remember the days when quicken let you have multiple account windows open in different windows?)

I feel as though Quicken has morphed from it's earlier "perfection" into a clumsy tool for managing finances and it's trying to be a platform for trying to sell lots of other Intuit products and services. They've cluttered up the menus with other things I just don't need and that have little to do with managing my money.

There is a menu option that lets me apply for a Quicken Credit Card. I don't get enough offers for credit cards in the mail already? You're going to pitch me one from within your software? Of course, I clicked on it, and up pops a window that gives me an error "A system error has caused a delay in processing your application. Please try again later." Kind of sad really.

If anybody is listening and even cares, here is what I want to see in Quicken 2009: NO NEW FEATURES. I want to see the Quicken Team clean up their act. Focus on making the product super easy to use again. Bring it back to the way it was when it was a nimble and helpful program. Make sure I can use keyboard shortcuts in the check register where I do most of my work. Get rid of the quirky behaviors. Focus on quality. No new features... lots of quality. Make this solid as a rock and fast. Let me work with more than one register window at a time. Clean up the menus and get rid of all the entries that are trying to sell me more services. Leave that on your website. If I want to buy something, I'll come looking for it.

Please give me a product that I can once again rave about, instead of getting an ulcer worrying about whether or not I should upgrade and risk data corruption or losing the ability to do my online banking.

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Save your PATH before installing!!!

I upgraded from Quicken 2005 to 2008. I had a couple issues you should know about if you're planning to install/upgrade:

After installing, my PATH system environment variable was truncated to just the most basic: '%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem'. All the paths added by all my program installations were blown away. I only figured this out after my Lenovo Thinkpad Z61m started to blue-screen when trying to connect to a wireless network. It turns out that many programs stopped working, some completely. This is a horrible bug, and not the most obvious thing to look for when you have problems. So, if you have not yet already installed, PLEASE save your path so you can restore it afterwards: Right-click 'My Computer'; Click Advanced, Environment Variables, select PATH, click edit. Copy the value, save it in a text file, so you can restore it after the install.

As for the Quicken 2008 software itself, I guess I'm happy enough, but there are some disappointments. I was hoping to use one-step-update with my bank's checking account, but my bank uses an 'enhanced-security' login process which 'remembers' your computer with a cookie; if you don't have the cookie (quicken one-step-update does not), it prompts with one of three 'challenge' questions. Quicken is not smart enough to remember the answers to these, and so every time it connects, it prompts for an answer to one of the security questions; in fact, with multiple accounts (checking, savings, credit-line), it prompts once for each account! Definitely NOT convenient. So I continue to manually download account activity, which now has added one more step --- a 'One Step Update Summary' window always appears after each download, so I now have to close that. There is a checkbox at the bottom: "Show this dialog only if there is an error", but no matter how many times I check it, it always shows the dialog.

Other than that, I'm happy enough, and continue to use it much as I used the 2005 version.

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Quicken 2008 Home & Business

I have been using the Quicken product for many years so I am familiar with the product function and support available. The product interface has changed again from 2005 to 2008 but that is normal and will take some time getting accustomed to the common functions.

For the first time since I began using Quicken, there were problems with the new product. After three attempts with product support and one phone call, I was able to resolve two of my three problems by loading a 2008 Quicken R6 patch. The third problem should be resolved with a scheduled Quicken maintenance activity this weekend. Overall, I like the product function but was somewhat disappointed with the support effort provided.

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