Customer Reviews

Quicken 2009 Deluxe [Download] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(23)
1 star:		(127)

 

 

I've been using Quicken Deluxe for about 6 years. I just upgraded to Quicken Deluxe 2009 and it 20 seconds to look at an account and 10 seconds to process any transaction which makes it basically unusable. After working with Quicken support for an hour and verifying the data file, support said that 2009 didn't support large data files well, they suggested I just delete all my old transactions every year and it would be much faster. Of course that defeats the whole purpose of using Quicken.

My quicken data file has about 20MB of data and quicken 2007 used about 200MB of ram to open it. Quicken 2009 now uses about 1.2GB of ram to open the same file.

As with every other new Quicken annual update, Quicken 2009 Premier has been released prematurely with numerous problems! The program simply fails to download transactions from many financial institutions but gives you an erroneous online update summary that the account was successfully updated!

And the technical support for Intuit products can be summarized in one word: "Nonexistant"! Intuit has created a Quicken Community forum where everybody gripes about there non-working programs, but no solutions are offered here.
And worst of all Intuit no longer has effective telephone support! Oh yes you can email them and request a callback that will occur within thirty minutes. I've been waiting for my callback for a week.
In summary, don't buy this product till they get the bugs out which will be at least six months from now.

It's very frustrating, but after years of using Quicken, they've finally given sufficient reason to abandon it. Download of financial information has not worked for over a month; erroneous prices get imported into the program, and it take hours to remove it. Quicken's response is to say 2 things simultaneously: 1. They fixed it, and 2. Mutual fund price download doesn't work. Unless you agree with that definition of "fixed," it's time to look elsewhere.

I upgraded from Quicken 2007 to 2009 and was I sorry. I couldn't download transactions from my Quicken credit care after the upgrade and I sent two and half hours on the phone to a very pleasant lady in India before we got it straightened out. We finally painstakingly removed all remenents of previous versions from my computer and reinstalled. Now that it finally works I see no value added over the 2007 version, which in itself was no better then the 2006 version. I see no reason anyone would need to upgrade to 2009 Premier

If you are an existing Quicken user, here's what you will find with 2009.
1) It is buggy. I'm now running the third release of Q2009 and it still crashes on me regularly. I've never seen Quicken crash and I've been using it for over a decade.
2) Your online banking may stop working. Mine did. Quicken Help suggests deactivating the accounts and reactivating them to get them working again. It worked for me.
3) It's noticeably slower. It's most apparent during a reconciliation where a click on a check takes a full second to accept. Clicking on an existing transaction in the register takes a full second to obtain focus. It was not this way in Q2007.
4) If you use the calculator in the amount field, you now have to press <Enter> in order to accept the full calculated amount or it will only take the last calculation. A minor irritant, but consistent with almost every transaction I enter.
5) New categories will suddenly appear in your category list. You will need to delete them.
6) Minor changes to the interface. Some are okay, like the new tabs across the top. None are ground breaking. The interfaces that should have been fixed, like manually matching the downloaded banking transactions to the existing transactions in the register, were not touched. Still very poor feedback when doing an Update from your bank accounts. The Account List is very different. I find its new creativity gets in the way of usability. Little, unexplained icons now appear on your register and other parts of the interface.

Overall - a $90 disappointment. I do not recommend this version of Quicken, especially not at this time while it is so buggy. Wait and see how 2010 works out.

Let me begin by saying that I never thought I would ever write a negative review about Quicken, a product I have loved for years. I have been a Quicken user for 12+ years and upgrade my version every other year. I have always had great success with the product and have never ever considered switching to a competing product (MS Money, etc.). However, Quicken Deluxe 2009 made me want to hurl my laptop out the window. The software is extremely buggy. Adding accounts has been hit-or-miss depending on the financial institution (American Express, Fidelity, Vanguard, etc.) and downloading transactions has been very frustrating with less than a 20% success rate. I am appalled that Intuit would put a product like this out given their stellar record till the 2009 version.

Verdict: If you are a current Quicken user thinking about upgrading, don't do it. If you are considering Quicken for the first time, buy the 2008 version, wait for the kinks to be fixed in the 2009 version or (I hate to say it) buy something else.

I have been a user of Quicken ever since the first release which came with clay tablets and a sharp stick. I was a huge fan. As a software developer I always used Quicken as an example of an application which did things right. They paid attention to how people worked and what use to take me hours on a spread sheet took me minutes in Quicken. With enough wine I actually looked forward to balancing my accounts.

Then came that ominous notice, the application that I had paid for years ago and which did everything I wanted it to do would be crippled come April, upgrade or else. End of support I understand, end of functioning I don't. But I was a loyal user and in some perverse way want the products I like to stay in existence so I paid up and upgraded to 2009 Professional.

The installation as expected was smooth, except that it left my desktop littered with icons for their other products. If you love the new smell of a computer with all the trial programs and links installed on your desktop then this will be an extra thrill for you.

Then the application, it has this weird habit of refreshing itself a few pixels off from where it was previously, it looked like it was going to make a dash for freedom from my monitor. It also drew buttons on top of popup windows, just in case I suppose.

But it was my old reliable, sort of, it zeroed out all my investment accounts, beat the banks to it. I'd log into my account on line, yup the money was there, I'd download it into Quicken, successfully by the feedback I got from the program, and, zero.

I did what any good user would do, I tried it again, I even read the instructions. I wish it had been because I was doing something wrong but either Quicken knew something the bank wasn't telling me or it was profoundly broken.

Quicken has a wonderful on-line site where you can buy all sorts of more Quicken products. They even have a community site where all kinds of problems and workarounds were presented. And it was cheerful, somebody posted "Together we can solve this!" "We" apparently does not include Quicken, they had nothing to say about any of the problems.

In short Quicken is no longer a software company, they are a marketing company they sell the promise that your life will be better, they sell the illusion of progress they sell remembrance of what use to be a really good product.

I purchased quicken deluxe 2009 in early September and was unable to install it on a Vista computer. I received a 1603 error. After multiple hours of reading and trying everything on the net - see Google Quicken 2009 installation errors, I called tech support. I spoke to a very pleasant Indian man who seemed to know the program well. After 2 hrs working with him, we could not install the program. I sent it back and received a full refund - of course no one refunded the time, effort and frustration involved! I have been using Quicken for years and have upgraded almost every year. My advice would be to avoid this program for now. My guess is by Jan 2009, Intuit will have worked the bugs out. They will also probably do so without admitting there were any problems there in the first place.

I have used Quicken for over ten years and three upgrades. I reluctantly decided to move to 2009 from 2006 and the results have been very disappointing. The biggest issue involves downloading transactions from my bank account. There is a major bug that results in some transactions being downloaded and others "appearing" at some other time. If you, like me, reconcile your accounts once a week, this can be hugely frustrating. The "One Step Update" is also a flawed tool. It does not allow for all credit cards to be included, even those with online billpay available. The online assistance to remedy the problem is cumbersome and confusing.

In short, the software has now become more of a hassle than a benefit and this user will be exploring alternatives to Quicken.

I installed Quicken 2009 Deluxe about 90 minutes ago. I was formerly using Microsoft Money 2007. Quickens help page didn't have any instructions for importing, it offered to notify me by email if it is ever updated.

I installed the program and it went fine. I created a new Quicken data file, gave it some information about my bank and it actually downloaded about the last 3 months of transactions successfully. I will update this review once new transactions attempt to download. There were 3 pending over the weekend and I manually entered them into the register so I don't know if it will reconcile them properly or just add another instance of them. We'll see.

I attempted the One Step Update and was asked to register. During this process the program repeatedly crashed and windows launched something called the Just in time debugger. After opening again I was still not registered so I repeated the process with different attempts each time to cancel out of the crash. After about 7 attempts I somehow got registered so the One Step Update button now works.

A new problem has now come up on my computer. When the Quicken Billminder gadget is running on my Vista Sidebar I periodically (few times an hour) get a message the Desktop Window Manager has crashed and the screen flashes for a bit.

I like the look of this software and what I think it does when it works. Unfortunately, based on my own experience and what I've read from other reviewers this is a joke. Intuit has a 60 day money back guarantee. I'll give them to the end of the month to fix the majority of bugs or return it. I'm using R2 - the current version. I believe an update is due within a week or so....

Update 10/7/2008

After my initial download of transactions, nothing else is coming through. It still has an online balance the same as 10/5/08 when I first connected. I look online and at least 5 more transactions have taken place and are not "pending". The budget creator worked well. It automatically searched the previous month (my decision, can go back farther if you want) and makes a rough outline based on your prior income and expense categories. I hope the online features are fixed in this software, otherwise it's only usable if you manually enter everything. It's ridiculous they released it with so many issues.

Update 10/18/08
I'll be requesting a refund on Monday. Additional transactions did eventually start downloading but Quicken never seemed to match my actual balance. The billminder error went away on it's own so that was a plus. As a last effort I created a new Quicken file and downloaded transactions again. I am being prompted to re-register at quicken.com when I update and it crashes with the debugger error I spoke of earlier. I'm not going through that again.