Quicken Premier 2010 [OLD VERSION] [Download]

by Intuit

Product Features

• Quicken Premier 2010 has all of the features of Quicken Deluxe, plus investment management tools to help track your portfolio performance and help maximize your investments
• Organizes your personal finances and makes portfolio management easier by bringing your accounts together in one place
• Helps you choose the right investments to reach your goals; identifies ways to minimize taxes on your investments
• Shows where you're spending and helps you see where to save
• Helps you stay on top of bills and avoid late fees with alerts on upcoming payments

Product Details

• Downloading: Currently, this item is available only to customers located in the United States and who have a U.S. billing address.
• Note: Gifting is not available for this item.
• ASIN: B002PDPIFW
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 16, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (209 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #718 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #25 in Software > Personal Finance > Money Management

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Quicken Premier 2010 has all of the features of Quicken Deluxe--plus investment management tools to help track your portfolio performance and help maximize your investments.

Provides comprehensive investing and planning tools. Click to enlarge.

Helps you make better buy/sell decisions. Click to enlarge.

Check in anytime to see exactly where your personal finances are for the week, month or year. Click to enlarge.

See your most important info in one place. Click to enlarge.

Getting started is a breeze. Click to enlarge.

Avoid late fees and penalties. Click to enlarge.

Easily manage and grow your investments

Includes all the features and tools of Quicken Deluxe, plus:

• Organizes your personal finances--and makes portfolio management easier--by bringing your accounts together in one place
• Helps you choose the right investments to reach your goals
• Identifies ways to minimize taxes on your investments
• Upgrading your Quicken? See "What's New in 2010" for the latest features and benefits

Features and Benefits

Provides comprehensive investing and planning tools
Easily track, analyze, and optimize your investment portfolio. You can see changes in assets, liabilities, and net worth with one click: we show how your investments are performing across all your accounts.

Helps you make better buy/sell decisions
We help you identify top-performing investments, so you can make smart decisions on buying or selling. For example, use Morningstar Ratings to compare mutual funds and see which ones best fit your investment management goals.

Shows you how to minimize taxes on your investments
Quicken Premier helps you get the maximum tax benefits on April 15th. It tracks cost basis, estimates capital gains, and exports your data directly to TurboTax for fast and accurate tax preparation.

Watch your savings grow
We make it easy to get on--and stay on--a budget. Set suggested spending limits and savings goals based on the information you enter into Quicken day-by-day.

An intuitive "Spending Planner" summarizes your actual spending and compares it to what you planned to spend for the month. Check your progress at a glance, and quickly see where you have room to spend or need to save more.

We can also help you create customized plans to reduce/eliminate debt--and to save for a house, college, retirement or large purchase.

See where your money's going
We'll show you what you have coming in, going out, and most importantly, what's left over to spend or save. Check in anytime to see exactly where your personal finances are for the week, month or year.

View your accounts all in one place
Organizes your financial information by bringing your accounts together in one place--including banking, credit card, loan, 401(k), and investing accounts. Avoid the hassle of going to multiple websites; now you can see it all with just ONE password. Access over 6,700 banks, brokerages and other financial institutions--including PayPal.2

Never miss a bill
See what bills have already been paid, what's coming up and if you have enough left in your accounts to cover them--all in one convenient place. Set reminders to pay bills on time and instantly check the status of past bills.

Enjoy free support when you buy, install or upgrade Quicken
If you need help purchasing, installing or upgrading your new Quicken personal finance software, free phone support is available. For more information, visit our Help & Support site.

Save money and shop smart
Our free service--Quicken Picks--seeks out the best online coupons and discount offers just for you, on the stuff you care about. You also get cash back on all your purchases, helping you save even more. You can sign up for Quicken Picks anytime within your Quicken software.

Easily import from Microsoft Money
If you've been using Microsoft Money personal finance software, we can help you transfer your valuable financial information to Quicken.4 With our easy-to-use Data Converter tool, you'll be up-and-running with Quicken in practically no time.

What's New in 2010

Already using Quicken? Reasons to upgrade now:

New--See your most important info in one place
The new Quicken home page puts all your most important financial information in one easy-to-understand window, so you can see how you're doing at a glance.

Improved--Find the tools you need, faster
The improved menu and toolbar make it easier to find the tools you need to help organize your personal finances.

New--Getting started is a breeze
It's simpler than ever to put Quicken to work for you--so you can reach your personal finance goals faster. With the new Guided Setup, you just answer a few simple questions; we'll show you how Quicken works, and what to do next. You'll see your total financial picture come into focus even sooner than you expect.

New--Avoid late fees and penalties
We help you avoid overdraft fees and penalties--by showing you how much you'll have left in your account until your next paycheck.

Improved--Check for accuracy
We've made it easier to review your transactions, so you can quickly spot anything that looks inaccurate or out of place. If a transaction requires follow-up, you can flag it with a reminder.

Improved--Get tips from other Quicken users
With Quicken's Live Community, you can get help and advice from other Quicken users without ever leaving Quicken. If you have a question about something specific you're trying to do, just look to Live Community on the right of the Quicken screen for the answer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Long time user: worst upgrade in a long time, January 7, 2010

By 

D. Hull (San Carlos, Ca USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Quicken Premier 2010 [OLD VERSION] [Download] (Software Download)

My comments apply to the Amazon download version on Windows/Vista. I upgraded from Quicken Deluxe 2007.

The issues I have are in two categories:
1. The Install experience
2. The performance of the new software

I'm giving the software a one star rating because it lost some of my data, something I consider unforgivable for any software product, but especially one that keeps financial data.

INSTALLING

After ordering the software on Amazon (super easy, as usual) you are prompted to download the software. As soon as the download starts it requests permission to install an Amazon package to manage the download. After that is done, the software is downloaded and installed.

Installation Issues:
- It deleted the previous version of Quicken without my permission!
- It installed a replacement for the Google Desktop Toolbar.
- After that new toolbar was up and running it asked after the fact if I wanted to restore the Google Toolbar.
- It started up Quicken, but the new Quicken release could not find my data!
- Worse, though an update was available, it did not prompt me to find and install it. The reason I waited a few months to buy this version was to ensure that I wasn't doing beta testing. BEWARE! DO NOT RUN THE DOWNLOADED SOFTWARE. First Find the 50+ MB upgrade and install it. I didn't and the results were not pretty.
- Ok, I groped around for the location of my data. Vista hid it pretty well, but it was there and once I found it, Quicken proceeded to convert it to the new format. No error messages were seen during the conversion.

RUNNING THE NEW SOFTWARE

- My initial impression of the software is that it is much slower than the 2007 software.
- The GUI has had an overhaul since 2007. Some may like it better, I'm not impressed. It seems to have the things I'm used to, but moved around a little. No big deal.
- I tried an online update to ensure it could do it. It seemed to work. At the end of this I got the first hint that there was a program update available. There was a message inviting me to update. I started the update which failed. I decided to look into that later.
- I looked at the numbers. They changed from what I had seen the day before in the 2007 product. Not good. Not a dramatic change, but something was different.
- I noticed that a credit card account balance was way off from what it should have been. Digging into that, I discovered that apparently the conversion utility had dropped a bunch of transactions!
- I tried multiple times to install the update, rebooting the computer, shutting down the virus checker, etc as suggested. I wasted an hour doing this. The update process failed over and over.
- I went to the support web site and found an article that suggested downloading and installing an update, about 58MB. I did that and the update installer reported that the upgrade had succeeded.
- I spent several hours comparing paper credit card statements to the data in Quicken. I haven't completed this process, but I have the correct balance now.

SUMMARY

In my opinion, this release should be avoided if possible. Intuit plans to discontinue support of the 2007 product this April which will shut off on-line account updates and other features. This forced me to upgrade. I humbly suggest a change in the revenue model. Just charge a subscription fee for on-line account access and let me keep what ever version of Quicken works for me. Why drag me through upgrading every couple of years? The basic job this software does doesn't change over time. Leave it alone or at least do some basic quality assurance testing before releasing it. Remember that some of us have a lot of historical data that we care about.

209 of 226 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not for former MS Money users, October 13, 2009

By 

Joyce "mugz" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quicken Premier 2010 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

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.

Update 11/3/2009: I am revisiting my original post because of the following:

1. Customer support has been great (although it took a lot of effort on my and others part)
2. I have imported 2 mny data files now with no problem. Part of the original problem I feel was because I did not install it as the Administrator. VERY IMPORTANT.
3. After using the program for several weeks, I am getting more used to it. Just a learning curve as it is very different from Money.
So, I would say at this point, make the purchase

126 of 135 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Minor Upgrade from Q2009 -- Nice Changes, October 11, 2009

By 

M. Wilson "twokatmew" (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quicken Premier 2010 [OLD VERSION] (CD-ROM)

I picked up QP2010 locally this afternoon. (I've been running QP2009 for the past year.) There doesn't appear to be a lot of "new" features so much as GUI changes. BTW, after installing and before converting the data set, Q checks for and downloads updates. In the "About Quicken" window, QP2010 reports it's running R2. I always upgrade early if not on day one, and this is the first time I've started with a release other than R1.

One really nice interface change is that it's now possible to use the "classic" interface, and you're able to turn off both the account bar and the new "action bar." As always, we can turn off the tool bar if we wish. The "action bar" is rather like MS's "ribbon" interface but not as elaborate or as space consuming. This feature allows users to regain some vertical space.

Instead of having the usual several-file data set, all Quicken data is now packaged in the *.QDF file. Prior to upgrading from QP2009, I copied my (multi-year) 20MB file set, bringing it down to 16MB in size. After upgrading to 2010, my data file was 19.9MB. Automatic backups are no longer numbered FILENAME1 through FILENAME5 (or whatever max number you choose). They're named in the format:

FILENAME-ddMMMyyyy-hh-mm-ss.QDF-backup

Also, manual backups are saved in the format:

FILENAME-ddMMMyyyy.QDF-backup

(As is the case with Quicken 2009, you can turn off Quicken's appending the date to the filename -- manual backups only.)

Additional backups during the same day get a -1, -2, -3, etc. appended to the end of the date. For example:

MYFILE-11OCT2009-1.QDF-backup

The bug where "update balance" defaults to a seemingly arbitrary date (in my case the date of my last balance update) rather than today's date, has not been fixed.

I haven't tested for other bugs, as this one is the most annoying for me. Further, as I've been able to duplicate it on two different operating systems on four different machines (and others have reported the same phenomenon), it seems Intuit could fix this!

Intuit also failed to listen to those of us asking for the return of 2007's (IIRC?) detailed category editor where we could actually see transactions linked to a given category. :-( That was a really useful feature. Now Quicken (as of Q2008 IIRC) simply reports that "if" the subcategory is in use when you delete it, its contents will be merged with the category. When I attempted to delete a category, Q warned that all subcategories would be deleted too. I don't understand why Intuit removed this very useful feature, as it was already programmed and worked very well. Now we have to run category reports before doing any major revisions to categories & subcategories. :-( I admit I don't do such reorganizing very often, but it's nice to have it when I need it!

I began using Quicken 3.0 for DOS when it first came out and have upgraded every year. The last few years I've paid full price and purchased Intuit's download. This year Intuit seems to have dropped the ball and is still selling Q2009 on its web site (as of this writing). Amazon started shipping Quicken 2010 today (at a nice discount), but no download is available yet.

Even though there are no earthshaking improvements, the improvements to the GUI are very nice. There are a few new "summary" pages which help with watching where money goes, etc. Overall, IMNSHO, Intuit has made good use of screen real estate without wasting too much space or crowding screen elements. A lot of options are customizable, so Intuit did listen to us on that count. :-) (I run my machines at 1280x1024 and 1280x800.)

Another change is that by default, cents are not shown in the Account Bar. You have to right-click and select the option to "show cents in amounts" if you want to see this detail.

This is the first year there is no MS Money. I'm sure writing the Money-to-Quicken converter was a major undertaking -- especially if it works well! The GUI improvements are very nice, and I do like QP2010. Still, I'm especially glad I paid nowhere near full price for it. Intuit says the Money-to-Quicken data converter will be available for Q2009 later in October.

During my cursory review this afternoon, I didn't find any weirdnesses, and the program runs well.

Overall, I'd say Q2010 has a streamlined user interface that will appeal to new users. Intuit listened and added customization options where seasoned users can turn off many new interface changes. Also for new users migrating from MS Money, there's a Money-Quicken data converter. As I haven't used the converter, I don't know how well it works. But it looks like Intuit has made a good, mature product easier for new users, and especially for Money users who want to switch to Quicken.