Customer Reviews

Quicken Home & Business 2010 [Download] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

I've been a Quicken user for almost 20 years and my last version was 2008. I was hesitant trying 2010 so soon after its release because I, along with many others, have been stung by bugs that have plagued earlier versions and have previously taken months for Intuit to fix. I'm glad I made the switch.

PROS
- 1 data file instead of 6 (plus an Attachments folder). It was about time! The single file at 101MB was a little larger then my previous files at 96MB.
- MUCH more resource friendly. The 2008 version frequently took up 1GB or more of RAM on my 3GB Vista Home Premium system. This version takes up only about 1/10 that. The many accounts I have (credit card, investment, banking) and the size of my file are probably atypical so your resource usage may vary.
- Faster loading of the application and updating of accounts. Hitting One Step Update is MUCH faster than before. One Step Update was the one action that slowed my system down and upped the memory usage quite a bit under 2008 and earlier versions. It still ups the memory usage but not nearly to the extent of before.
- More stability. 2008 used to crash intermittently - during One Step Updates. It might be too early to tell but so far no crashes.

CONS
- As other users have mentioned, the UI hadn't changed much in many years. This version is certainly no exception. It's still intuitive enough for new users to get up and running quickly. I'm not sure about MS Money users though (I tried MS Money a couple years back and I was thoroughly confused!).
- Memory leak? Previous version have suffered from this so it's nothing new. When I first start this version, it uses 57MB of RAM. After having it up for an hour and running One Step Update a few times, the RAM usage went up to 140MB. The more updates I do, the more memory used without any signs of the program releasing said memory after the operations have completed. Still, the vastly smaller memory footprint doesn't make this a real issue.
- Yearly updates. They're always rushing a new version out the door every year and it shows. They should spend a couple of years fixing/overhauling things or throw more developers at it (i.e. have an elite team of developers working on a revamp separate from the team that does incremental annual updates).

Overall, if you have had resource issues and update problems, and/or like the convenience of 1 data file, then 2010 is worth the upgrade. If you're perfectly happy with your current version then there is no compelling reason to upgrade other than Intuit shutting off online updates for versions over 3 years old (2007 users will HAVE to upgrade to keep downloading transactions from financial institutions and, if the past is any indication, you will have until April 30, 2010 to do so).

I have been a Quicken user for about a decade. I previously had Quicken 2007 installed on my PC, but since Quicken fixes it that you have to purchase a new version every 3 years if you want to download transactions from your financial institutions, it was time for an update. Quicken tends to incrementally add new features from year-to-year, so if it were not mandatory to update periodically in order to download transactions, I would probably update less frequently. For the features I regularly use, I see very difference between 2007 and 2010.

I prefer to do a clean install, so I first uninstalled my previous version of Quicken. When uninstalling, Quicken leaves behind your data files to use in the new version. This latest update process was probably the smoothest I've experienced. I have about 10 years of data, and Quicken 2010 converted the previous data files to the current single .qdf data file in about 5 minutes. With that, my preferences were maintained and all accounts were up-to-date.

Here are the reasons I use Quicken rather than simply rely on my online banking website:
1) convenience of having transactions and balances from all financial institutions in one place
2) ability to separate business and personal expenses
3) makes it easy to find taxable deductions without having to use additional tax programs
4) by downloading transactions every couple of days, one can get a jump start on finding fraudulent charges if they exist
5) ability to see the equity built up in my home from month-to-month
6) built in check register

Quicken also has the ability to keep track of your investments. However, if you're an active day trader, you would be better served with a dedicated software program for tracking your securities. Perhaps Quicken has inproved its handling of stock transactions, but I found that when I was an active trader using prior versions, the balances were not accurate and suitable for use in filing your Schedule D.

With the demise of MS Money, Quicken is basically your only choice for downloading transactions to a desktop program. I would have given Quicken 2010 5 stars, but deducted a star because of the program's built-in obsolescence after only 3 years and requirement to pay full price to update to the latest version.

I have been using some version of Quicken since 1995 and am happy with the software. However, I am not happy with the fact that Intuit forces you to upgrade the software every 3 years although there is no compelling reason to do so. If you download your bank and credit card transactions, you have no choice but to upgrade because Intuit says that the older version will not support the download any more. This appears to be a business tactic to continue the revenue stream and not for helping the customer or for technical reasons.

I have been a Quicken user since 1995, and upgraded each year up until 2000, and then every third year. I knew that if the upgrade did not occur now, I will most probably have issues with One Step Updates for my banking / financial transaction downloads. Being a Home & Small Business User, unless a deal is available, it makes it hard to justify paying $100 every year or every 2 years. Anyway here are my first impressions after using it for a day.

I upgraded from Quicken Home and Business 2007 to Quicken H&B 2010. I had nearly 25MB of data in 5 Quicken 2007 files, plus another MB for Quicken Home Inventory. The install, software update took 4 minutes, including uninstall of the old quicken version. The personal data / online banking conversion to the newer version and one-step update took an additional 8 minutes. Like every previous version since 1999, Quicken added 5 icons to my desktop, including 4 weblinks to get Quicken-marketed products (message to quicken - stop cross marketing. its annoying).

The GUI (interface) is different from 2007, the software loads faster, less of a memory hog, and there are lots of bells and whistle (including tags for the transactions, different way to show upcoming payments etc.). There is always a learning curve when you use a newer version (after 3 years of using the old one) and so far what I see is a new paint job on an old car with newer version of older gadgets. Moreover they never upgraded the built-in Home Inventory Manager (which has the same DOS-Excel version since 1997), because they tried to sell a GUI-based buggy version as a stand-alone product and failed.

This was a required upgrade for me, but unless your quicken software is circa 2007 and prior, and you do not need to download your financial data, then there is no need to upgrade to this version.

I will provide another update after exploring what more this version has to offer.

I downloaded Quicken 2010 Home and Business as an update for Quicken 2009 Home and Business. The download and installation from Amazon was no problem after I downloaded the Amazon files for downloading software and games. Had a slight problem getting my old Quicken files to convert to the new version of Quicken. Ended up bypassing the installation option to convert my old files and instead used the "file/open" option after I got the software installed and that worked fine, converted my files and then I just saved that opened file. Also had a problem in that I have another program that uses the .pdf printer option and the Quicken .pdf printer settings were keeping my other software from using the .pdf printer option. I had to delete and reinstall the .pdf printer file for that other software so that it would again be first in line. Overall, this seems to be a smoother upgrade than 2009 which was a nightmare until they got all their glitches fixed. I would also add that I tried the online support from Quicken and after waiting in the print cue for 24 minutes, at 9 seconds it canceled my request and gave me a search box instead so I wouldn't waste my time waiting in line for help.

I have been a Money user for a decade or more. I use it for both business and personal finances. I liked being able to track all of my business expenses in one place and knowing how much profit/loss I've made since day 1. I was really worried when I read that Money was going off the market, and disappointed to find that there really aren't any comparable products on the market. I decided to give Quicken a try, although I was scared by the negative reviews.

I had no trouble at all importing the files from Money. Everything transferred over, although I did have to spend a little time changing the name of some of the online banking services so that they matched Quicken's. It also took me a little time to figure out how to set up the business side of things. But now that everything is set up, it's running smoothly. There are still some things that aren't great (when I have a transfer between accounts, it doesn't automatically figure things out; I have to go in and adjust things on one side to put it in the right category then go delete the duplicate transaction in the other account), but it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.

Yes, Money is a little bit slicker in appearance. But Quicken doesn't really look like something from 1994. Everything is in one spot, and it's easy to see where the money is coming from and going to. I like that the business side has the tax categories for schedule C all set up. Of course it takes a bit of customizing to make it fit my own business needs, but for the most part I haven't had any trouble at all.

1. The UI is really poor, I was shocked when I started using it that any company could survive this long with such a poor UI. Many controls are homemade or hacks of the Win95 (1995!!) controls, they have unusal behaviors and are very annoying:

a) The scroll bar is the old Win95 version, on top of that it gives no indication that there is no where to scroll, like a real scrolbar, so if the screen is exactly full, it looks like you can scroll but nothing happens
b) They have 2 odd drop down lists, one is the Win95 version, the other is some homemade thing with art so tiny I cant see it (I am 50), very hard to use
c) Most the buttons are all squished down to a small size barely big enough to hold the text, again hard to see
d) Pressing escape, no matter how many times, won't get you out of editing a transaction, ARRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!
e) They are using some old style list for the transaction list, none of the columns can be resized

2. The transaction entry is the most horrible thing ever:
a) You ARE ALWAYS in edit mode, even on reconciled transactions, if your cat walks on your keyboard, good luck
b) Due to "a" you have to keep all the confirmations turned on, which gets old
c) There are no classic transaction forms, you have to use the inline entry in the transaction list, like tiny 9 point font made further hard to see because of the edit box borders crammed into the space
d) The transaction entry buttons hide the transaction below, the more recent one, hello?

3. The help matches older products, online setup is especially a frustration since most the help points to menus from past product versions that dont exist.

4. The online import is a nighmare, when setting up a new account there is no ability to select how much history to import, the system imports 90 days worth. This means if you are trying to convert a business on a particular cutoff date you can't.

5. The signup process for online bill pay is like "security nuts gone wild"! Do they really need FIVE personal questions?

6. The online feature cannot link to equityline or mortgage accounts.

7. The online feature will not import the opening balance for accounts with no transactions within 90 days, even when they have money in them.

8. If you add an account that includes setting up a payment in Step 1 of the wizard, you won't get to step 2, online billpay, you will have to find the menu choice. Don't ask online help, it is for a different version.

9. Invoice entry is a cude small fixed size dialog in tiny fonts with crowded controls, there are no premade line items, you have to enter them over and over and...

First, I would never have bought this product except for the demise of Microsoft Money. The only use I have for Quicken is to track my investments.

Second, Quicken Home and Business 2010 itself easily loaded on my Vista computer.

That said, my opinion is that for me converting Money to Quicken was a pain. Quicken kept coming up with error messages about open files, template.*, failure to recognize, etc. It seemed Quicken did not recognize the existance of Money on the computer. When I went to the help section, it gave me info for converting up to Quicken 2009, which is totally different, and totally useless, for use in Quicken 2010.

A tip: under file, go to file import and then to Microsoft Money file. Don't be surprised to get error messages. Do not use the separate "Data Converter" program as it is for 2009 and older only.

Why can't Quicken include a user manual on the disk or on their site? Why rely on "community groups" to possibly have a solution? Quicken can include promotional material for sale of checks and a credit card in the box but can't include installation and use information?

How did I get it to work? I thought about installing the suggested trial download of Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe to see if that was a newer version that Quicken might recognize. When I downloaded it, it wanted to eliminate my existing copy of Money, which really concerned me since I didn't have a disk for Money, as it was preloaded on the computer when I bought it. So I backed up the program to a cd, along with a data backup. I then decided to see if Quicken would recognize the Money on the cd for conversion and it did. So my Money data was converted to Quicken.

Now that it is there I must admit it is nice. I set up the desktop to open to my investment file and it updates the info well. I will continue to tweak the desktop to my preferences as I figure it out.

One of the big wastes for me is that Quicken wants to include all kinds of banking, credit card, bill paying, etc info on the program. No thanks, so I had to create nonsense files like my bank name being "none of your business bank." Then I have gone back to delete as much of the nonsense as I have been able.

Bottom line: so far a good product but be prepared to spend time to set it up. I have about 4 hours into getting Money to convert.

If you are a current Quicken user faced with a forced upgrade, version 2010 is better than at least, 2007. upgrade only when necessary. My upgrades this decade were in 2004 and 2007.

As a heavy user since 1988, I've seen a lot change with Quicken, many have been painful. Versions this decade are the least problematic. Periodic upgrades do make sense given its Internet centric operation because HTML, encryption, security protocols, and more, have evolved much and Quicken must adopt these changes. Alas, to users most of these are invisible and behind the scenes. In 2010, Quicken now uses the .NET framework for coding, a mixed blessing, as it consumes more memory, resources and disk space to add capability and stability. Computers should find these added needs inconsequential if these machines run games and 720p movies easily. I've not had problems with data syncing, slow response, bugs, lost data, corrupt files etc., despite my 4 year old computer and continuous data going back to 1985.

I've never upgraded to a first release of a new version to avoid bugs, nor overwrite a prior version. Always make a full system backup before installation, a system restore point just before installation, then a fresh install, then import the prior data file as a copy, keeping the old file intact. This leads to the least, if not problem free upgrade and an effortless path back to the old version should the upgrade bomb. Although I received 2010 Release 1.0, online files were available to upgrade my 2010 to Release 4.0.

The GUI design has remain unchanged, and clearly noticeable improvements and editing aids are welcome, BUT not worth paying for.

Quicken does make effortless a core function of personal finance, quick retrieval and reliable storage of data, editing and later analysis via reports. In the past decade, data retrieval has been nearly flawless; duplicate entries are increasingly rare even if you overlap a data set, say after syncing manually then later add data using a QFX file. However, Quicken has many shortcomings that should have been fixed decades ago. Quicken has sub-optimally organized or thought out functions. Its not intuitive where a function is, several do the same thing or are poorly thought out. For example, there are 3 ways to write electronic checks that do the same thing differently: through a 1990s "online banking" interface, the checking register, or a separate checkbook app. Attachments to register entries, such as jpgs of checks, can be encrypted individually, however you can see the files whether encrypted or not, the annunciator is poorly located so its not immediately clear if attachments are encrypted, and this option implies Quicken data files are not encrypted entirely, a serious oversight. There is also suggestion from Elcomsoft, that a backdoor exists for decoding Quicken data file passwords. Luckily, one can separately encrypt files or drive partitions using Windows options or 3rd party programs.

The new user or light Quicken user should know there are several free personal finance managers available for download that read Quicken formats. I've tried some of them but they lack Quicken's overall flexibility, and they are similar to early versions of Quicken. Thus, if your needs are simple like budgeting, then tracking income, expense and some investing, there maybe free alternatives. Should you decide to move to Quicken later, these programs allow exports into the Quicken format.

First of all, I am really surprised to see the positive feedback for this product.

I am a MS Money user and yes with MSFT exiting the product line, I have not choice but to look for an alternative. Here is is my feedback.

1. Data Conversion: Went well. There were a few hiccups along the way and after I set up the online account services, I HAD to manually delete (a royal pain) all the transaction that were downloaded for the period that had already been reconciled. I toughed it out, assuming that this would be a one time deal and would not have to be repeated.

2. UI Look and Feel: Sorry, but Intuit has missed the boat on this one. The look and feel of the 2010 UI is in the dark ages when compared to the MS product. Besides the graphics, the text in the ribbon is so pixelated, that I frequently find myself firing up MS Money.

3. Account Registers: MS Money users will miss the forms that allow you to enter the transaction information. In Quicken, one has to type the transaction in the list itself. Not very intuitive.

4. Categories: MS Money users will miss the ability to enter a part of the category and the software find the matching categories for the transaction, regardless of the location of the text in the category. Quicken will only find it if the category 'begins' with the text entered. Eg: If you enter 'Allowance' in MS Money, it will pull up 'Living Expense:Allowance' as a category, not so in Quicken.

5. Account Totals: The account totals at the bottom of the register should be fixed and should not change with the view of the transactions (cleared, uncleared, all, flagged etc). I fell off my chair when I saw my account balance change to be negative, when I selected a view of 'uncleared' transactions.

This is after using the product for a few hours. I have yet to go into the reports section. I believe Quicken might be stronger here, but I am vary.

I am returning the product and have requested a refund. Yes, we curse MSFT for its monopolistic behaviors, but they do put a superior product together compared to the competition. I am sorry to see MS Money die.

10/23/09 Update:
Couple Updates:

6. Bank Updates: I was expecting the Update button on the bar to be a one step update button. Not so, if you click on that, you get a window to enter the 'vault' password. Once you get past that window, you get another window to select which banks you want to connect to. Then one has to wait while Quicken spins its wheels trying to connect and get updates from each back in a SERIAL manner, painfully one after another. MSFT users, once you enter your password when you open your Money File you are done, authenticated for the session. The updates from the bank are 1 (yes .. One) click away and they are fired off in parallel.

7. Reconciling Split Transaction: MSFT Money allows users to reconcile one bank transaction to multiple Money transactions. Once you 'accept' one of the splits, the other get accepted too. Can't do so in Quicken.

8. Accepting Transactions: The process to accept downloaded transaction is not as intuitive as in MSFT Money. Money has a logic to match transactions and shows the two transactions together, easing the decision making process. In quicken, you have to pay attention to what you are doing in 2 different (register and bottom) portions of the screen. PAINFUL.

Anyway, getting off my soapbox, stopping the use of the Quicken product, will continue to use MSFT Money. If online access get shut off, will prefer to do manual work than use a really shoddy product.

Sorry folks, I know I sound really negative and may sound like a rant, but quicken users dont know what they have been missing. I will take a look at the quicken offering in 2020.