Quicken 2012 is a buggy disappointment.
Each year Intuit changes the look a little bit, adds one trivial feature, breaks a few things, then ships it like it's a "new product". And each year like a sheep I buy it, thinking "this time it'll be worth it". About half the time, I ask for my money back.
I am trying 2012 after using 2010 for the last two years. Honestly, I would try something else... but sadly there *is* nothing else.
The look is a little nicer than 2010, and everything else is very much the same... except for these bugs, which I saw in the first 15 minutes of use:
Bugs:
1) When you are entering a transaction as a transfer, it shows *all* your accounts... even closed accounts or accounts that you have marked as "hide". This is clearly a huge bug and a huge hassle. Nice quality control.
2) When you look at a budget item in a montly view, then click on a budget item... it shows an unsorted list of items from many months past. So, unlike the 2010 version, you can't actually tell which are the transactions that are being included in your budget. This is, again, a really dumb bug to having in your released software.
3) When I download transactions, then say "done"... it goes into automatic reconcile mode... then says "do you want to close the reconcile window w/o saving your work?" Like it's trying to close the window it just popped up. WTF?
4) When creating a new budget, the budget analyzer was running... then quicken put itself in the background. It was weird... some other window just popped up in front of quicken.
5) The first time I did a "one step update" the update window just sat there... it looked complete, but there was no "okay" button or "done" or anything. Nice.
Things that are annoying:
1) When starting up, quicken identified my 2010 quicken data file and says "restoring from backup". What backup? That file wasn't a "backup". Confusion from the get-go...
2) Really? I need to send Quicken my name, address, email, before I can connect to *my* bank and download *my* data? Didn't I just pay for this software? Why is registration immediately mandatory?
3) I thought downloads from my banks were supposed to be faster in this version, but in my experience they are not. Especially "Express Web Connect" banks... slow, slow, slow.
4) I would like the option to restore quicken to its default settings with this new version. I'm afraid of missing new features that I might have turned off.
In summary, Quicken 2012 is surprisingly buggy... and the bugs (especially #1 and #2) are bad and so readily apparent that I'm frightened about how many more bugs are yet to be discovered. I'm see no compelling reason whatsoever to keep this software and will probably try to return it and go back to using 2010.
Honestly, I couldn't have a lower opinion of Intuit for continuing year after year to release the same software again and again like it's new.