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Quicken 2004 for Mac

Quicken 2004 for Mac

List Price: $69.95
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Happy Panther Quicken User
Review: I feel that the other reviewers tell a very unfair story. I almost didn't buy it because of them. But instead, I find the interface to be seamless, and top notch. All of the features of previous Quicken versions run very well
I had no problem transfering my Windows Quicken 2000 Basic data (thousands of transactions & 15 accounts) into my new Quicken 2004 Mac File, and that is as cross-platform as it gets!
I feel that Intuit has done what they always do: Put out a quality full-featured product. Go ahead and buy it. Don't sweat the naysayers.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Quicken 2004 Mac crashes too much to be useful
Review: I, too, am a dedicated user of Quicken. I was using Quicken 2000 for the longest time to manage all my personal accounts, credit cards, etc. When I saw that Quicken had a new version, 2004, I downloaded it immediately. Even with more than enough memory allocated, the program crashes randomly when entering data. It's slower than any previous version and has very poor help on Intuit's website.

Unless Quicken can put out some fixes, they've lost one more customer because of this poor quality.

This software hardly rates even one star.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Product doesn't work for me on Panther
Review: I've got to say I'm hugely disappointed in Quicken 2004 for Mac. I purchased it last week and installed the application on my new Powerbook G4 running Panther (10.3). After installation, the product quits with an unexpected error. I can't get it to run. I called up quicken and can't get through. Also I've made my request via e-mail and no matter what address I use, it keeps pointing me to FAQs which doesn't tell me what to do.

It's really disappointing. Save you money. I hope I can get mine back.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Ok, but don't expect the Windows version
Review: I just got a Powerbook and had to switch from PC. I assumed everything would be the same with Quicken, but only read all the reviews on Amazon after I ordered the product. I got very worried and I almost didn't open the box. I'm happy to say that the product loaded up fine. Converting from Windows was another matter. You've got to get rid of a lot of definitions and account info. Even then, the program failed to carry over all the info and I had to spend hours trying to find out what was missing. I finally gave up and did a reconciling adjustment. Since then, everything has worked well, but the interface is pretty bad compared to Windows. But, what are the alternatives?

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do not purchase if using Mac OS X 10.3
Review: Although it looks nice, it still doesn't have the same features as the windows version. A common problem for those of us with Panther, is that Quicken keeps unexpectly quitting when you try launching it. The only solution is to reinstall the software package. There's nothing on Quicken's web site about this, although its quite a well known problem reported on quite a few web sites. I've been very disappointed with Quicken because of this, and pray for a competitor.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: not a review
Review: I really can't review this product since I haven't installed it yet, but all you Mac guys saying, "gee, the Windows version is so much better" should really check out the reviews of Quicken 2004 for Windows on this site. Yow!

At least you can get past the splash screen on the Mac. I'm not going to get in the middle of the Mac/Windows debate here, but it looks like Intuit is getting a bit complacent. Let's all hope Quicken 2005 is better on both platforms.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Bug City
Review: The best term I can use for Quicken 2004 would be "flaky." First, it crashes way too often. Second, it could not accurately import my Quicken 98 file. Third, it produces "N/A"s in the IRR report where Quicken 98 had no problems. Fourth, I have "ghosts" of securities deleted long ago showing up in my portfolio view. Fifth, my retirement plan does not support Quicken 2004 for electronic download. (Can someone tell me why an electronic download should even care what Quicken platform it is being sent to? A .csv is a .csv, a .gif is a .gif ... Even Microsoft has figured out most cross-platform document issues!)

All of these problems appear regardless of how I create a new account, either from scratch, with an imported my Quicken 98 file or with a Quicken 98 QIF export. Just plain shoddy.

For the record, this will be the last version of Quicken I ever purchase. Since my mac is a bit long in the tooth anyways (Pismo), I will probably migrate to a PC and Microsoft Money. Microsoft doesn't deserve my consumer dollars, but for me the Mac platform is not viable without a competent checkbook/portfolio management program. I hope Apple realizes what damage Intuit is doing to their brand.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Unacceptable report capability
Review: Quicken 2004 for Macintosh has significant problems with Reports.

I know of two, but thry are probably the tip of the iceberg since I use very few Quicken Report formats.

The first problem is with the Comparison Report. It does not calculate percentages correctly for negative comparisons. For example, one of my items was $320.20 last year and $0.00 this year. The report says that the % Difference is positive 13413289.47%. The correct difference percentage is negative 100.00%. This greatly undermines my confidence in Quicken and its publisher.

The second problem concerns pagination. I print some long reports. Quicken does not show "natural" pagination. I need to generate a Print Preview via Adobe Rader to see the pagination. Then i need to reenter Quicken to insert manual Page Break(s)" and go back to Adobe Reader to see the result. I print some 60 page reports. It is onerous, inefficient, and time consuming to prepare a report for printing. It really isn't even workable.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: It's Not All It's Cracked Up to Be
Review: I've never used Quicken before but it looked like a really great program so I bought it for [a fair amount of money] (yikes)!!! When I installed it, after trying for over two hours, I finally realized that Safari 1.0's file download feature does not work with Quicken file exports so I couldn't export my financial data from my bank and import it into Quicken. Apparently you have to use IE or Netscape to export files but I could never get either of them to work correctly. I just kept getting error messages about the export file being an Aux file. It really didn't matter in the long run because my bank (Bank of American Military Bank in San Antonio, TX) does not support Quicken 2004 for Mac so I can't use any of the automated account downloads, Web Connect, on-line banking or other on-line Quicken functions. (As a caution, before you go out and plunk down your [money] for this software, make sure that all your financial institutions support Quicken 2004 for Mac and are on the list of participating financial institutions). So I called the bank and according to them, when I export my financial data from my bank account, it's saved as a Quicken 99-2003 for Windows file (which is the version of Quicken that they support). But, I can't import that file because that file type is not recognizeable by Quicken 2004 for Mac, so I'm screwed there too. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any conversion programs either, so I'm pretty much out of luck. I next tried to download my American Express and Mastercard accounts (which were on the list of participating financial institutions - thank goodness!) but the data that was downloaded and entered by Quicken was different than what was on my on-line credit card statements. The transactions didn't add up and my balances that were shown in Quicken were wrong. I couldn't even tell what my balance was or anything. Perhaps, being a new user, I wasn't doing something properly but I couldn't figure out what, if anything, I might be doing wrong. The bottom line is that, after two days of fooling with this program, I gave up and uninstalled it. ...

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Much better than Quicken 2003
Review: I must say that overall I like Quicken since I started using it in 2002. It's great for managing my finances, and keeping a close eye on them helps me save a lot of money. However, the bugs have annoyed me greatly. I don't remember the bugs in 2002 that annoyed me, but they prompted me to get the next version, which fixed some of them, but added others including one considerably worse bug involving net worth calculation with investment accounts. (2003 double-counts unrealized gain at the time of purchase of a stock. A -horrible- bug.)
I bought Quicken 2004 based on the rumor that it fixed this bug and some UI bugs. It fixed all of the bugs that I previously had trouble with, and I haven't found any other calculation bugs yet. I've been running it almost daily for a week with great success.
I have seen no crashes (much improved), no calculation errors (which are HORRIBLE to have in a product like this), and no horrible UI bugs (as I've seen so far, the scrolling/display updating problem in the register view has been eliminated, but since it was random, I may not have been using it long enough to tell). That's not to say that any of those problems don't exist, but in my use I haven't seen them yet.
Intuit *should* have fixed the bugs in 2003, but for practical purposes for me 2004 was a good buy. I haven't found the new features very compelling, but the bug fixes were definitely worth it for me.
I am running MacOS X 10.2.6 on a G4 currently.


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