Customer Reviews

Quicken Deluxe 2010 [Download] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(62)
3 star:		(43)
2 star:		(42)
1 star:		(125)

 

 

I purchased Quicken 2010 Deluxe today from a retail store. I believe the official release date is tomorrow, but they had it in stock for sale, although it was hidden in a corner of the store with only a few copies, so not exactly a big promotion. I installed it in about 10 minutes on my Vista laptop without any issues. The installation process first removed my Quicken 2007 software, installed Quicken 2010, checked for updates over the internet, and then converted my Quicken 2007 data file. The entire process went very smoothly.

The interface in 2010 is slightly different from 2007, but mainly just different colors and slightly different graphic formats. Other than that, I've poked around just about every feature to look for something that this product does different from 2007 and could not find much of anything. The only convenient change that I have noticed so far is that when I back up my data, the data is now contained in one file, rather than having six different files associated with the same backup.

For the price,I guess it's good to know that my software is three years newer, and likely has been tested under Windows 7 so that I will be able to upgrade my operating system in the near future without any issues. However, this upgrade confirms that you really don't need to purchase a new version of Quicken every year. Once every three years was more than enough here, and unless Intuit comes up with some revolutionary new tricks for their software, I suspect the next time I will be writing about Quicken will be in 2013.

I upgraded from Quicken 2009, installed on 64-bit Windows Vista. No problem while upgrading or data transformation. I used it 3 days and saw following changes in Quicken 2010 -
1. Now I can configure which tabs to show on main panel, options include Bills, Banking, Investing, Planning, etc . I was waiting for this feature, not a big deal but kind of handy when you want to get control of what you want to see.
2. Now Quicken is creating one data file instead of multiple files it used to create for 2009 version. So easy to carry / copy data files.
3. Startup time has improved.
4. Look and Feel of user interface has changed.

I don't know if Intuit made any important under-hood changes or security upgrades but releasing products every year without any significant changes in user experience doesn't make any sense to me. They are also forcing people to upgrade every 3-years, that is very short product life cycle. I think Intuit is out of ideas or solid release plan for their products OR may be only interested in $$

I would say that if you are using Quicken 2008 or 2009 then you may not find any WOW changes unless you are facing any issues with your current version. If your quicken is not automatically downloading data from internet because of sunset policy, you may try this - Many financial institutions allow you to download data in Quicken web-connect format, you can download that on your PC and then import that in your quicken, just one manual step.

I gave 4 stars to this product because it is doing what it is supposed to do and if you are new user then you would like it but 0 stars to Intuit and it's policies.

I've been using Quicken 2008 and decided to buy and download Quicken 2010 this afternoon. After installing I was very disappointed to find that the free online version actually was better suited for my needs than the purchased copy. The online version has more options with my bank (it can pull loan infomation while the Deluxe edition cannot) and I don't use many of the other features that warrant the cost of this one.

I decided that I would ask for the refund that is advertised with the product:

"100% Satisfaction Guarantee
If you're not 100% satisfied, return your Quicken Deluxe 2010 personal finance software with your dated receipt within 60 days of purchase for a refund of the purchase price (return shipping and handling charges not included). "

I sat, waiting in queue for half an hour to get a support person on a live chat to request my refund. He told me that they will not honor the refund because I bought the download version and I would have to request it from Amazon. In my opinion, that "Satisfaction Guarantee" needs to state that if you buy a download edition you have to go back to the retailer. There is no clarification of that before I click to buy and it's not as if I'm buying from a non-reputable source I trust that a purchase from Amazon will follow any requirements from the manufacturer. A quick look at the policy and Amazon has clearly stated that "Downloadable software products" are not returnable. I hope that they will work with me on this more than Intuit, but, as it stands I'm stuck with software that I don't want and a "100% Satisfaction Guarantee" that is not being honored.

I only give the application 2 stars because if your banks fully support the features that you need and you use more features than those which are available in the free online version then it may be worth the cost, just don't buy the download unless you have to have it right away!

I am a former MS Money user and was looking forward to effortlessly importing my data files into Quicken 2010 as promised by Intuit. The reality so far is a nightmare. Before I continue I consider myself very knowledgeable in dealing with Computer and software issues. I purchased and attempted to install Quicken Premier 2010 on October 10, 2009. The software loaded without problems. When you first open the program you are given 3 options on how to proceed. I chose the option that says I want to import my data from MS Money. As soon as I selected this and clicked on the get started button, the program crashed. I closed and reopened the program, only to get to a new screen that does not show the previous choices. After various attempts to get back to the original screen failed, I opened a chat session with customer support. After a 30 minute wait, I was connected and an agent helped with an alternate method to import the Money data. The import was successful and I thought I was good to go. I closed the program. The next day I attempted to reopen the program and the system once again crashed. Numerous attempts to reopen also failed. I removed and reloaded software with the same problem. I then downloaded and used an Intuit cleaner program to remove all traces of Quicken. I also deleted some files and folders detailed on the Quicken website. After this, I was again able to install and open the program, however when I selected the option to import Money data it once again crashed. I have since been unable to reopen the program. Not wishing to remove and reinstall again, I went to the support page of Quicken to contact customer service by phone. I felt pretty good when it promised "I would be contacted within 60 minutes. Guaranteed." Now I am unaware of what the guarantee means because I have been waiting for over 9 hours without a call back. I cannot recommend this product. If I do not receive a response by tomorrow, I plan to box it up and ship it back to Intuit for a refund. I will continue to use MS Money and update my portfolio and bank accounts manually. This product, and customer service does not live up to what they claim. Unless a fix is forthcoming, I say, save your money.

I've been using Quicken for about 7 years. Until upgrading to the 2010 version I'd been running Quicken 2007. Upgrading from 07 to 10 was easy and only took a few minutes to convert my data file. All my memorized updates work, so from an ease of upgrade standpoint, they did a great job (at least under my particular circumstances).

Stylistically they made a few changes to colors and fonts, which I personally think are an improvement, but that's preference more than anything. The nuts and bolts of the program have changed very little. They do let you modify your tabs which is something I've been looking for since 2002. You can now choose which tabs you want on your main start screen which is nice.

The program is also more stable. My old 2007 version would semi-frequently lock up during bank-info downloads. This one hasn't locked up once, and is a lot more stable on my Vista 64-bit system. I hope it retains that stability when I upgrade to Windows 7 in a week. (I'll update my review once I am on W7).

The bottom line is does this upgrade offer something substantial enough to warrant spending the money to buy it? I don't believe so. Aesthetic improvements aside, upgrading to a more stable version, while nice, would not be necessary if the program had been programmed correctly the first time around. I do like that it crashes less, but that's really an issue with the 2007 version being buggy and could have been fixed with a patch instead of a complete program replacement. I'm not a big fan of paying for new versions of programs that do basically the same things as the older version without any compelling improvements.

That said, this program does what it's supposed to do, and does it pretty well overall. Do you need to upgrade? Probably not. You're not gaining any remarkable new features with this version, so if your older version is stable and does what you need it to do, save your cash.

*****UPDATE 01-13-2010*****

I've been using QB2010 on 64-bit Windows 7 for months without a hiccup. Intuit really improved their platform stability with this release. It's not crashed a single time vs. crashing regularly with QB2007. Also, they've released an service pack which adds support for some additional banks, as well as patching a few glitches (ones I never noticed or that didn't effect me). Overall this is a good QBs release.

Intuit continues its downhill slide in quality control and user irritation across their product line with Quicken Deluxe 2010 (Windows).

The most infuriating thing about upgrading to this version is that it introduced literally dozens of categories into my data file without even asking me. My categories ('accounts' in accounting parlance) have been in use satisfactorily for many years and I had no need for these crazy new ones that Quicken 2010 inserted: "Ads", "Car" (I had "Auto" and subs), dozens of "Biz" entries, etc. My memorized reports all ask me what to do about the new categories, they show up in lists, etc ... so I'm busy purging them all at the moment...

Readability of various screens and lists has decreased over earlier versions. Problems with reports that have existing since the 1990's still exist. Responsiveness of the application is ridiculously slow as you page or scroll through lists, delete categories, etc - as if none of it was natively programmed. Old (really old) bugs still exist - such as scheduled transactions not picking up the proper amounts from memorized transactions the first time you enter the payee - have to switch to another payee then back to the intended one, possibly a few times.

Instead of fixing old problems, including speed (remember when Quicken was "quick"? I do.)...and report formatting (remember when subtotals were in a different column?, account names were not truncated? There was space control under subtotals, and more? Yeah - that was Quicken for DOS in 1990) they introduced more garish charts, buttons, tabs etc that just complicate the user experience.

They still install (without asking) irritating advertising buttons on your desktop - and of course advertise for more paid services in the product. Look, if they gave away the product, then they can shove advertising at me in return. But, we all paid for this. We should have an 'opt out' box on the installation screen saying "No, I do not want to be presented with any icons, in-product offers, or e-mails for services from Intuit or any 3rd party." Oh, I cannot count the ways that I hate this corporation...

If there was another product that could convert 100% of Quicken (and Quickbooks) data to allow one to move forward and leave Intuit's products behind ... I would jump ship. Intuit either needs a strong competitor, or to seriously get their act together.
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Update 4/3/2010: Besides the comments I linked to the original review, I just found a really bad bug (or really stupid change in behavior) that anyone preparing their taxes should be aware of: For the last 20 years, if you customized a report to show "Tax-related transactions only", you would get all transactions for categories that were flagged as 'tax related'. As of Quicken Deluxe 2010, any such old reports are now broken if you had categories that do not have tax lines assigned to them. Only those items checked as 'tax related' and which ALSO have a tax line assigned will show up in a tax-filtered report now. In the past, the tax line assignment was simply a convenience for TurboTax users/importers - and also allowed a tax-line oriented report. But, it was not required.

Quicken 2010 is a powerful financial software program that you can do a lot with. You'll be able to consolidate and organize a great deal of data about your financial picture. One of things you can't do with Quicken, however, is extract that data for use with another program (such as the cross-platform Moneydance) in any kind of reasonable time frame or with any reasonable chance of success.

The only way to get data out of the program is in .QIF format, one measly account at a time. It's worth noting that Quicken no longer supports _importing_ .QIF files for most account types, claiming (in article 3886 on their support site), and I quote, "QIF technology is over 10 years old and was designed for technical support purposes. ... QIF Data Import requires many steps to download, can provide a poor customer experience, and can lead to duplicate transactions and errors."

That old technology is good enough for you should you want to _export_ data from Quicken, however. Intuit is going to make darn sure that you have a "poor customer experience" and suffer from "duplicate transactions and errors" if you try to take your data to any other program.

Currently using Quicken version 2006, using Windows XP Pro SP3, 1280x1024 display resolution. User since Quicken Dos. Do not use for downloading banking or stock information. Uninstalled previous version first.
Install of Deluxe 2010 and conversion of data went smoothly.

Problems:
Account List displays only about 16 lines of accounts vs. 31 lines of accounts in 2006 version. If you "user select" to display more than one column choice, such as Current and Ending Balances you have to pan right as more than one selection will be off the screen. 2006 version fitted on screen.

"Help" button is locked at bottom of register screen resulting in more wasted screen space and less register lines being displayed.

Edit scheduled transaction screen extends off the side of display so you must drag to the left to access. No longer fits on screen like earlier version.

Intuit tech indicated that display problem corrections are being worked on for the Accounts List.

Attachments. In Quicken 2006 using any version of Adobe Reader 7 or higher results in you having to manually "end process" the "acrord32" in Task Manager before you could delete or replace attachments in the registers.
Same problem in Quicken 2010, I had to revert to Adobe Reader 6 if I did not want to end process "acrord32" everytime.
Using Quicken 2010 with Adobe Reader 9.2 and end processing "acrord32" you still can not delete or replace attachments.

Back in 2006/2007 Intuit tech said they were working on this "acrord32" problem with Quicken and Adobe Reader. Duh.

I have moved back to using Quicken 2006 and plan to check periodically for the new revisions of Quicken 2010 to see if these problems are fixed otherwise before the 60 days satisfaction period expires I will submit for refund from Intuit.

Only reason to purchase is to maintain online access to your accounts, otherwise wait a couple of months for revisions to fix problems.

I have been a Microsoft Money user and switched to Quicken 2009 when Microsoft announced they would discontinue Money. While Quicken 2009 was not perfect, it did what it was supposed to do (mostly). Given that I had a large amount of legacy Money data, I decided to try (as in buy) Quicken 2010 mostly for its in-built Money converter. I should have stuck to Quicken 2009 because it has been an incredibly frustrating experience so far.

Every time I tried to open a file, I kept getting the dreaded "Quicken Launcher has encountered a problem and needs to close" error making the program virtually un-usable. I got in touch with Quicken support (after a 30 minute wait) who essentially asked me to re-install the software using the QcleanUI method. This seemed to work fine for about 20 minutes. During those 20 minutes that it worked, I figured it would not update some accounts which previously updated without a hitch (in Quicken 2009). I am now back to getting the dreaded quicken launcher error every time I try to open a file.

Bottomline, Quicken 2010 is plain un-usable at this point. Apparently, I cannot get a refund if the product is downloaded via Amazon. So much for 60-day no questions asked money-back guarantee. I hate it when things don't work when they should. Quicken 2010 unfortunately, does not work.

Wanted to put this out there so others might avoid the problems I am having. To be fair the interface is much better. But my primary use of Quicken was the Financial Calendar view that I had as my default home page so I could see all my checking and credit card bills and deposits with the projected balances below. This made seeing where I was such a simple operation and this was in Quicken 2009.

When I upgraded to 2010 much to my surprise and many emails, phone calls am most importantly my time, they informed me that you can no loger add the Finance Calendar to your default view. Now it is 3 clicks in to get to it. So just about the time I was ready to conform I noticed in the calendar I was no longer seeing the credit card payments ( I like to pay off the card every week ) so that was not being accounted for in my future balances. Guess what, they tell me that is no longer a feature either.

So why would a good product release a new version that can't do at least what the old one did is beyone me. But wait, it is not over yet.

I decided to uninstall the 2010 version and reinstall the 2009 version, but since I had a week of transactions completed in 2010 that now need to be added to 2009 for some reason the 2009 version will not recognize now by balances are out of whack and the remider tells me I have transactions to accept ,but there is nothing there.

So at this time it appears the only way I am going to be able to get this straightend out is to remove all my old data and start from scratch.

So beware, I would stay away from 2010.