Sunday, January 30, 2005
Quicken rant
I used to upgrade to the latest version of Quicken each year and then wonder why I bothered. It was like I was paying my annual "Quicken Tax". I stopped doing that when I bought Quicken 2001. It works fine, why upgrade? I also use Pocket Quicken on my Treo. The combination of Quicken and Pocket Quicken works great for me.
The other day I got a letter from Intuit, the maker of Quicken, telling me that they were discontinuing support for Quicken 2001. Fine, I don't use Intuit support anyway. But it goes further than that. They are also disabling online services for Quicken 2002 and older. The ability to download bank and credit card statements from financial institutions will stop working on April 19th, 2005. I don't get it. Where does Intuit enter into this? It's a data format. As far as I know, I'm not paying Inuit for this service. Will the software disable the service itself? Granted, I didn't pay very much for Quicken but I never expected that the software was, effectively, time-bombed.
Inuit offered to sell me a copy of Quicken 2005 for $39. That's not expensive but I felt like my arm was being twisted to upgrade. To pay the "Quicken Tax" again. So I decided to take a cheap route: I found a shrink-wrapped copy of Quicken 2003 for $10. I haven't installed it yet but my plan is to upgrade before the April deadline.
A few years ago Intuit included an intrusive activation scheme in TurboTax. I was a TurboTax user for years and MacInTax user for years before that. After hearing about problems others were having with that version of TurboTax, I decided to try TaxCut instead. The UI may not be quite as slick but it works fine. I've been using it each year ever since. If I didn't depend on PocketQuicken, which is not an Intuit product, I'd probably consider switching away from Quicken as well. Granted, Intuit isn't making any money from me now, but I'm disappointed that an apparently functioning product, Quicken 2001, is about to just stop working.
The other day I got a letter from Intuit, the maker of Quicken, telling me that they were discontinuing support for Quicken 2001. Fine, I don't use Intuit support anyway. But it goes further than that. They are also disabling online services for Quicken 2002 and older. The ability to download bank and credit card statements from financial institutions will stop working on April 19th, 2005. I don't get it. Where does Intuit enter into this? It's a data format. As far as I know, I'm not paying Inuit for this service. Will the software disable the service itself? Granted, I didn't pay very much for Quicken but I never expected that the software was, effectively, time-bombed.
Inuit offered to sell me a copy of Quicken 2005 for $39. That's not expensive but I felt like my arm was being twisted to upgrade. To pay the "Quicken Tax" again. So I decided to take a cheap route: I found a shrink-wrapped copy of Quicken 2003 for $10. I haven't installed it yet but my plan is to upgrade before the April deadline.
A few years ago Intuit included an intrusive activation scheme in TurboTax. I was a TurboTax user for years and MacInTax user for years before that. After hearing about problems others were having with that version of TurboTax, I decided to try TaxCut instead. The UI may not be quite as slick but it works fine. I've been using it each year ever since. If I didn't depend on PocketQuicken, which is not an Intuit product, I'd probably consider switching away from Quicken as well. Granted, Intuit isn't making any money from me now, but I'm disappointed that an apparently functioning product, Quicken 2001, is about to just stop working.
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