Customer Reviews

Microsoft Money 2002 Deluxe [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Checkfree, the folks who service online payments for Money and Quicken banks, have mandated a new system that appears in Money 2002 and Quicken 2002: Once you upgrade to one of these products, there's no going back because your bank will change the way they handle your electronic transactions.

Further, Money has made a terrible change in electronic payment processing in 2002: Everytime you enter a new payment, the program puts you on hold while it connects to the bank and downloads the transaction. Yes, you're reading it right: you have to wait for each payment to be processed individually (no longer in batches).

Microsoft Money tech support says that many, many people are screaming about this; so much so that it may encourage the powers-that-be to issue a fix for this version.

Also, the fact that they try to force you to use a Microsoft Passport password is an incredible pain...but it can be disabled. The insidious thing about Microsoft is that they make it unpleasant and difficult to disable (repeatedly asking you, each of the next three times you start the program, if you're sure about your decision not to use Passport).

Otherwise, though, the program is sound. That said, had I known what I now know, I would not have upgraded from Money 2001.

By the way, I'm a Quicken refugee -- got tired of that programs' continuing instability. A friend told me today that Quicken 2002 is a complete disaster...so much so that he emailed the President of Intuit (and got a prompt and personal apology).

Good luck with your choices...

I purchased Money 2002 as an upgrade to Money 2000.. Now I'm wishing I would have stuck with 2K. The biggest grip I have is the fact that on every page there's advertisments for MS partners or MSN etc. If that's not bad enough, everytime you update Money from the Internet you get these nice icons placed on your desktop for Ameritrade and such.. Delete them and next time you update there back. If MS wants to sale ad space by placing ads on it's products and forcing users to live with their desktop setting the way MS wants it to be, then the product should be free.. Kinda like those "Free" Internet service providers... But then again, MS tends to force it's users to live with a lot. Secondly, if your like me (pay check to pay check) knowing what bills lie between those pay checks is a must. In Money 2000 this was a sinch, just glance at the detailed view and your set, in 2002 it's a lot harder. You still get the detailed view, but it's a slimmer "simpler" view, you do get the nifty calander at the bottom, so to view what falls between different paydays, you have to click on each of the bolded days and scratch down the bills on a piece of paper. My overall suggestion, if your using an older release, stick with it. 2002 Upgrade is a waste of money.

If you already use Money 2001 or earlier, this upgrade is, for the most part, a waste of your time and cash. A recent Money 2001 user, I was immediately attracted to the new feature of 2002 that automatically updates account register information. This, I thought, was worth the upgrade alone since I would no longer have to spend time downloading all of my account information. Hey, it would be done for me! How easy could this get? What I found out was that in order to use this nifty feature I would have to pay my bank $2.95 per month to interface with Money. And, this only covered 10 downloads. Additional downloads would be 50-cents each. Because Money automatically updates your registers each time you open it, this could get costly. Imagine, if I didn't want to get charged more than my monthly fee, I would only be able to open money 10 times! This was ridiculous since I am already able to download my statements for free. So, check before you buy because this is really a financial institution's rule and not money. If you will not incur any charges to use the background banking feature, then I would say go for it. If, on the other hand you have to dip into your account, better stay with Money 2001. Rather annoying with this edition is the passport sign-in. Others have complained about it and I thought it would be something I could get used to. But, it is aggravating and I would have preferred a choice of whether to utilize my passport account. In the end though, Money is a fantastic program and worth checking out. Only, if you're a current user or even brand new to financial software, save cash and aggravation by purchasing 2001. Do your homework! You'll be glad you did.

I was a Quicken user for 9 years and made the switch to Money 2000, then 2001. I recently downloaded Money 2002 Trial version and was very happy with it which lead to my purchase of Money 2002 Deluxe.

Here's some baseline stats on my system:
AMD Athlon 1G with 256 MB RAM. My money file is about 17MB large (containing all transactions since 1991).

Things I really liked:
- reports run much faster now. (in Money 2001, reports used to take 30-60 seconds; now they take less than 10 seconds; this is still much slower than Quicken's, but is improving).
- "Income vs. Spending Over time" graph is now part of the report. This allows for graphing monthly income vs. expense side-by-side. This was alwasy available in Quicken, but not in Money till 2002.
- Very clean and nice GUI
- Customizable home page with Follow-up notes, Spending Progress, Flagged transactions.
- Reconciliation with online bank or charge card downloads are much more intuitive and easy over 2001. [Make sure you turn off automatic Accept in Options].
- transaction data entry, download reconciliation, and reports all have their performances improved much.
- auto backup of the 17MB file is much quicker now than in 2001.

Other reviewers have disliked some Money behaviors, but most of them can be changed via "Options".
- ads can be turned off
- registration reminders can be turned off
- MoneySide can be turned off
- Auto Accepts during download can be turned off

Overall, MS Money 2002 is much improved over 2001 in performance and features and GUI.

I upgraded from Money 2000, and most of the differences are cosmetic. It does have some nifty features for keeping track of your portfolio, i.e., click on the + symbol next to the stock to drill down investment activities. It also shows mutual fund daily gains/losses (Money 2000 did not). The Money homepage also shows more detailed information about your portfolio (information that in Money 2000 could only be viewed by running a report). In general the product just looks better. It gets three stars because of some very very annoying features. First, you have to "sign in". You can skip the sign in if you like, but it will continue to ask until about the third for fourth time you open your money file. (Sign in uses your hotmail or passport account to gain access to your file.) The next feature is MoneySide which is a button on your browser's toolbar. When you shop at a website, the MoneySide sidebar pops open and begs the question "Is this purchase in your budget?" I quickly disabled this because 90% of the time I'm only browsing for items and not actually buying them. If you have Money 2000 or higher, then this upgrade may not be worth it. If you have Money 99 or lower, then I would definately upgrade.

Just some facts:
1. If I don't want to register the software, please leave me alone.
2. I don't want to become passport member and don't want that server to have my information.
3. I do NOT want to see any ADs in my "paid" software!

I have been using Money since 95, and have always upgraded to the "latest and greatest" There was only one new feature I liked, that was being able to show online bill payees only if desired. I do not like Moneyside, it is pesty and a worthless addition. I don't like the browser reconfiguration, or the flagging of Hotmail/Passport account, but the item that bothers me the most is in the check register. When downloading transactions the program is easily confused and doesn't find many existing entries.I thought it was me at first, as I couldn't beleive it. After much comtemplation, I deceided to wipe my hard disk and go back to either Money 2000 or Quicken 2001. I also have Money 2001 but had negitive experences with that. I ended going with Money 2000 Deluxe. In my opinion, the very best Money program Microsoft ever made. Quicken also performs fine but for me is a bit bulkier and less convienient. Microsoft has shifted directions on many products, and I am now giving other products a much closer look.

When I upgraded from a previous version of Money I was prompted to let the upgrade change my Norton firewall settings. Turned out the upgrade uninstalled the firewall completely. Why was it necessary to do this, and who would have been responsible if my system had been breached while the firewall was down?

I don't like the direction Microsoft is going. Installers that remove security and Passport integration that is not easy to turn off (despite what Help says)give me the sense that Money has crossed the line from being helpful to being intrusive. I will be keeping a very close eye on Microsoft software from now on.

For those of you considering buying Money 2002, I'd suggest going to the Microsoft website and downloading the trial version first (which *is* the Deluxe version). It has a two month lifespan, which is perfectly adequate for figuring out whether you will like the product or not. I've spent the last two days mucking around with it and I really like what I see. I like the 'dashboard' functionality where you set up all your account details, portfolios etc, and then Money will tell you which stocks are doing well, doing badly etc. I am very wary of linking bank accounts directly into the internet, so in the meantime I'm just downloading stock information. It is a bit limited on the international stocks side, and the US product is (surprise surprise) catered for US tax law and US investments (eg: 401K). But I would expect that this would all come in handy for someone actually from the US. The best functionality in this product is definitely the dashboard, cash flow and budgeting facilities. Basically every time I log into Money, it updates itself with the latest Money updates (ie: patches etc) and stock values, and tells me at a glance how everything is going. I'd give it five stars, but there are minor gaps in the functionality - like you can't import historical share data if the share isn't on the MSN listings. But this is very minor. It is definitely designed for you to set up all your accounts, all your shares and bonds, set up all the links into the internet to get current prices/values/balances, and then periodically monitor and update as you require. I'm not planning on using all the functionality, but what I have seen is very neat indeed. Up until now, I have managed such information in Word or Excel. I will purchase this product before departing the US as I believe it will save me time in the long run.

I'm having exactly the same problem others are reporting. Money 2002 Deluxe Home and Business is easily confused by downloaded transactions. By consolidating the Accept/Change for downloaded transactions in the live check register, the designers of this product have created a basically fatal flaw in the software which now has left me showing "1 Transaction to Review" but its not in the register (and I can no longer see it on the downloaded statement as you could with earlier versions of Money to find it). Apparently because of this flaw, I can no longer download current statements from the bank! I've used Money for 4 years now with different versions, the best was Money 2000; this is by far the worst. Both my wife and I who have been Money fans up to this point, are very unhappy with this release of Microsoft Money. DON'T BUY OR UPGRADE TO THIS RELEASE OF MICROSOFT MONEY!!! We're basically at the point of either wiiping Money 2002 off the computer to go back to the 2000 version or replacing it with QuickBooks.