Customer Reviews

Quicken 2009 Home and Business [Download] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(36)

 

 

I've used Quicken for 15yrs+, buy every major upgrade. But this one has no new significant features, it adveritses some, but they don't stand out. I think there might be some extension of current features, but it's not changed my organization or advanced my reporting or insight in any new ways. I would not buy this particular upgrade had I known how insignificant this upgrade is for current users. I gave three stars because overall Quicken is still a GREAT product, just a useless upgrade for current users.

I've had it with Quicken. From its bizarre copy protection schemes to the endless promotions of its own products within the program and some of the dumbest programming decisions around, such as downloading all transactions from a single financial institution into one account, even though you have separated them into multiple accounts. I don't need Quicken making these decisions for me.

The endless selling is intrusive and annoying. You have to be very careful that you aren't initiating some process that won't end up having you cancel it later.

Quicken's help file is ridiculous. It is incomplete or in many instances uses terms that are different than those used in the program itself. All too often the sketchy help file entries refer you to an equally poorly written and uninformative web entry - where Intuit attempts to sell you more of their products and services.

Because they were first to market and did a passable job in their early years, Quicken dominates the market. But, in my opinion, for the past several years, Intuit has abused its own customer base. I'm tired of it, tired of the endless marketing promotions in the programs, tired of the lousy help, tired of the ridiculous inflexibility of the program. I'll be looking elsewhere in the future and leave these moneygrubbers behind.

Jerry

Amazing how the 'downloadable' verision costs more than the box, huh? I rated this product in the standard media and gave it five stars. I took one away here for 1.) the price should be less 2.) you also have to download a download management program from Amazon --I did this for Turbo Tax and it worked well, however, it, the proprietay nature of that beast is a little disturbing to me, especially the size of that program.

Also, if you are in a hurry for this -i.e.,you want to download it- you probably want to read the bottom of my review about quicken.com.

I have a SMALL business and have been using Quicken for years. Along the way I have noticed how a few years back that Quicken (Intuit) let their product slide and also introduced hype each year to entice you to buy something that wasn't much more valuable than the previous version. (During those years I tried MS Money, etc., but Quicken still had the edge IMHO in spite of the decline in quality)

When the business grew a little last year I also bought Quickbooks 2008 (I also fell into a hype trap about Payroll addition which was nothing but a service. . .but that is another story) Last year I used it a lot but found that Quickbooks was too cumbersome for a business of my size. So, that caused me to look around for a good product again.

Yes, I was VERY hesitant to buy this product; was planning on returning it if it didn't live up to its claims. . . but surprisingly, IT DOES. I have been using it about four months now.

The primary feature is the ability to separate your business and personal trasactions on one screen. Being a techie I understand that there was a signficant amount of database work to accomplish this -and they did it- and in such a way it is very convenient to use, even for business transactions that may be in accounts that are normally 'personal.' This product is a breeze to use for a business my size and to also keep up with personal finances. Probably if I had as many as five-ten employees I would use Quickbooks.

2009 also offers several other bells and whistles above Quicken 2008: The ease of adding new accounts, the reports, the way it imports data is better and some features I seldom use, i.e., 'Quicken Picks' which produces coupons from stores you use. Even these make it worth the price.

But again, it is the Business and Personal data that are easy to seperate, but managable together on single screens that does it for me --it is a signficant advancement along with these additional bells and whistles.

You may want to shop around. I looked at it here but then bought it from Intuit who was bundling it with WillMaker, etc., and etc. And their websites are also improving, e.g., when my computer crashed all I had to do was log back in to quicken.com and reload ALL that software. Intuit is definitely trying to do better, this product was well worth it for me.

I first have to agree with the prior posts that the updates LOOK great, & I really wanted to give this a better rating, but not all of the new features are working. I downloaded this and upgraded from 2007 just for all of the new tax prep in it...and it doesn't work! I guess because it's 2009 it won't import Turbo Tax .tax files any older than 2008 (really?), it won't even let you manually enter your 2007 tax information into the tax planner (the drop down has an option for 2008 & 2009 only). This isn't tax planning! This is crazy. If you don't own any other version and you need it now or this isn't a feature you need (if you're buying this version I can't imagine you won't need it) then it's great...but don't plan on it being fully functional until 2009 I guess.

Remember when Microsoft told us that Vista was so much better than XP and 2000, but those who bought it discovered that even though everything was much prettier, it took them twice the amount of time to do basic things they could do before? It seems that Intuit is doing the exact same thing.

I was a very, very happy user of Quicken Home and Business 2006. In fact, I have been a happy user of Quicken since it was sold on 5 1/4" disks for the Apple II.

Intuit started telling me that automatic downloads from financial institutions would no longer work, and that I had to upgrade to 2009 in order to keep that feature. Being a computer programmer, I know this is a lot of bull. What happened was, someone in the marketing department discovered that people weren't buying 2009. So what do they do? Planned obsolecence. Start disabling perfectly good features in 2006 so that everyone needs to fork over $80 to buy the new version.

I happily forked over the money. After all, like I said, I was perfectly happy with 2006, and I figured that 2009 would be an improvement.

I had always been very happy with Quicken's user interface. The problem is, it seems that since 2006 it seems that they fired all their UI people. The new software is "pretty". It's got "round edges" like modern software is supposed to have.

But just one small example. The accounts list on the left of the screen can't be resized past 242 pixels. So if I have an account that reads "American Express - Starwoods Preferred Card", it now reads "American Express - Starwoo". Yes, I can rename the account, but why should I? In 2006, I could resize the panel just fine, thank you very much.

Another thing that boggles my mind. There is a 2-pixel vertical line to the left of that screen. It took me about 10 minutes to realize this is supposed to be a scroll bar. I am no UI expert, but this breaks every single usability rule in the book. In 2006, there was a perfectly fine traditional scrollbar. But some idiot designer decided along the lines that usability wasn't as important as keeping the beautiful rounded corners pretty.

This is just talking about two little features. Multiply this by about 200, and you'll know the frustration you'll be facing when you install this. There are dozens and dozens of buttons that I'll never use, but now every time I open Quicken I'll have to navigate through them to do what I want.

This is the kind of thing that happens when a company becomes a monopoly. They lose touch with what made them successful in the first place, and a bunch of hack executives try to "improve" their product, but end up destroying it because they don't try to understand what made it successful in the first place. In Quicken's case, it was simplicity, lack of bloat, a great user interface, and a product that worked. I hate to say it, but Intuit "jumped the shark" with this one. They dropped the ball with Turbotax, and now they're doing the same with this once-fine product.

I installed this useless program as a supposed upgrade to 2004. I have been very happy with the 2004 version and thought this might have more features. First, the transaction downloads from your financial institution to the program does not work. (I used this a lot in 2004 version, but reason fro upgrade is that Intuit decided to make my version obsolete, not allow you to use the online features on the older versions)
Sometimes the transactions would show up if I closed the program and opened again, but often not. I tried to update directly from the financial institutions website. This does not work correctly. It just brings up the old circa 1994 version. After this mess I decided to go back to the 2004 version.
This is where the real nightmare begins.
When you install 2009 it puts your old information into a special folder. Well guess what? Installing 2009 messes up the registry. It keeps the file association with the new version. When I attempted to restore my old files it say it belongs to a newer version and it won't work. Having foresight, I created a system restore point right before I installed 2009.
Also, manually back up your old files before installing 2008, preferably to a CDROM or USB flash drive where the new software can't ruin it.
I did a system restore. I tried to open my 2008 program but the program had been damaged.
Once I uninstalled the 2004 and reinstalled it, I was finally able to put my backup file back into the drive.
I only have three words to describe this junk:

Class Action Lawsuit!

I've been a Quicken user for a long time. Intuit used to be a great company - great products and services. Apparently, corporate greed has taken over.

I don't own this 2009 version. I have 2006, but have been informed that I must purchase 2009 if I want to keep downloading bank statements. The 2006 box did not contain an expiration date. So now my choices are supporting unscrupulous business practices or spend lots of time and energy converting to something else. I agree with the reviewer that calls for a class action lawsuit!

In prior years, I've used MS Money. It let me download directly from my banks and brokerages with no problem. Now, this version won't let me download from my banks by directly talking to them unless I register with Quicken and hand them my personal information.

There is no reason for them to need my phone number, physical address, or email address to use basic functionality in a product which already cost a fair bit.

Besides the fact that it won't work properly until you give your information to Quicken, the interface is poorly designed and buggy. Entering paychecks is a tremendous hassle, they expect you to go through their condescendingly stupid "paycheck setup" process. If you want to spend $70 to help their "marketing partners" and be insulted by poorly designed software, this is the perfect product for you. If you have a basic clue about personal finance and know how you want to enter transactions and would like to easily customize your records, look elsewhere.

Don't worry though, Quicken does have support. Cryptic English with poor cut & paste jobs from the help files are free, but if you want to talk to somebody on the phone it's only $25 to get help with the software you just bought.

I have been using Quicken since 1999. I generally upgrade every year, but this year decided against it. One reason, the 2009 improvements over 2008 look unimpressive. The primary reason, however, is that I've had such a bad experience recently with customer service regarding my 2008 Home & Business version.

WARNING: if you get error CC-501 and Quicken technical support requests your CONNLOG.TXT and OFXLOG.TXT files, be aware that these files contain PERSONAL DATA. In my case, they contained financial account logon IDs, account numbers and even transactions revealing my salary information. I told them there was no way I would send that data and they shouldn't need my private data to determine why there is an error with a Quicken server. The technical support reps agreed with me, but claimed that is the policy and nothing can be done about it. Nothing like passing the buck. After a frustrating process, I reached someone who is supposedly in executive office customer service, but in any case was sympathetic to my situation. After she reached out to me, the problem stopped, but she was willing to work with me to find an alternative solution. In any case, to get to that point was extremely frustrating and the Quicken culture of customer service has seemed to decline over the years. I haven't researched Money, but if find that Money has an impressive product, I think I'm ready to make the switch.

By the way, the CONTACT INFO for the helpful person in EXECUTIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT is "Bianca" 520 901 3000 x03059.

As far as the product, even though I have Home & Business, I use just the basic features - tracking transactions and electronic download. I've found most of the improvement features over the last several years unimpressive and to this day, I still can't figure out how to properly track my investment accounts. I just download the data and hit except all.

Before you buy any Quicken product read Quicken's own support site. As a user since 2001 and most recently owner of 2008 I can tell you that this company has the worst product support I have ever experienced. If your intent is to use this product for investments be aware that Intuit has migrated their web based investment product over a month ago and there are multiple usability problems not the least of which is the inability to correctly download quotes that has made this portion of the product totally useless. In fact the home page still indicates "Beta" version. Despite this they stubbornly refuse to fall back to the old working version until they can correct the problem riddled new version.