You would think that after all these years Quicken would expand their portfolio management to include bonds, investment grade commodities (gold, silver), and a host of other options. To do a serious comparative analysis of all of your investments, you should be able to compare results of a broad spectrum easily. Contacting Quickens Customer Support is an exercise in frustration. Not only did they not understand the problem, it was clear that whoever replied to my request for information did not speak English.

It has an easy to use interface. It can still run on a computer without internet connection. Some upgrades have proven more utilitarian than others but the 2011 version is insulting. Major changes to the interface actually make it more cluttered and cumbersome than useful.

I could understand if the banks changed their formats of file protocols and Quicken didn’t create a patch for older software to accommodate, which is just regular changes that happen! But to take a perfectly good working software and cut off features to make it uncomfortable to not upgrade seems sort of like a scam to make $! I’ve also found that GNU Cash did a good job with allowing me to make custom graphs although the user interface was rather cumbersome. By contrast, Quicken seems to have a few pre-set graphs and nothing else is available.

The really problem is just how poorly it downloads transactions from financial institutions. I have to review everything it does.

But overall, no weird error messages or restarting, it just worked. One major gripe with 2008 was how bug-ridden the one step update process was. The new version was supposed to run faster and work with twice the number of financial institutions. But this is not what I experienced. None of the available “help” options are of much help, and there is no documentation that I can find unless I go to the bookstore and buy a manual. Their support stinks.

I was unable to deal with my bank accounts or my credit card. Now I wouldn’t know anymore what charges or payments were posted to my credit card, what deposits or payments made by my bank account; I’d have to start writing checks manually and mailing them via USPS. I “upgraded” to Quicken 2011 with hopes that it would improve things. I have no doubt that there is an overarching logic to this application, but it’s lost on me with this interface. Also, buyer beware if your investment brokerage isn’t a Quicken Partner (which is the only way automatic transaction downloading will work), because I have spent over an hour of each day since receiving Quicken trying to set up my 401(k) account manually, and I’ve failed each and every time. Also, the user interface still leaves a LOT to be desired – especially if you’re trying to use the home and business version. I found the invoicing cumbersome to say the least. So I decided to start “fresh” with a new Quicken file and import all my accounts from my financial institutions. I then added the loans and assets fresh.

It has an easy to use interface. ceramic dog bowls.

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