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Summary: Great for keeping every day finances straight
Review: My needs are small--I just want a place to keep all my finances recorded, have reminders set up of upcoming bills, etc. I honestly don't use the downloading features or any of the complicated thing that may give other people problems. I love the pie charts that track my spending. Categories are easy to modify, as is the account information from the beginning (I'm unsure what gave other people problems modifying their account information). If your needs are similar to mine, I wholeheartedly recommend this product.In contrast to other reviewers, I've found it a simple matter to update my starting balances; however, if you happen to leave off from the program for a while, it takes a bit of finagling to update your accunt info, since you can't just erase all the information you had entered before and just start from scratch. That's why I give this product only four stars.
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Summary: save your money, buy a different program
Review: Frustrating program, frustrating help system. Most features do not work. Worthless for business.
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Summary: I hate this product...
Review: I am an engineer and use computers all day, every day. I have been using Money 2002 for almost a year now, and I am still struggling with the horrible budget functionality. It completely ties your hands with how you want to track your budget. For instance, when I make a credit card payment, you generally categorize it under a special category that Money creates such as "Credit Card Payment: Discover Card" (for example). However, I cannot get that "special" category to appear in my budget! I have to work around by creating an additional "normal" category for this expense and then assign the funds to both categories. This results in a double payment, which I have to negate with an opposite category. Awful. Howabout this: I created a auto loan account. Fine. But I cannot get my auto-payment to show up properly in my "Expenses" budget window unless I use their "Bills & Deposits" feature, which also gives me problems. I could go on and on and on. I have been struggling with this horrible software for some time now and I am throwing in the towel. Like most Microsoft software it throws so many features into your face and tries to do so much automatically that it completly obfuscates the simple tasks you want to perform.
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Summary: Great for first time instal, but as an upgrade.
Review: I think that this version of MS Money is good in the fact that it has become more task based and it has a lot more fuctionality with the MS Office programs. I also have found that it is a bit faster the some of the previous versions. The few things that I do not like about it however, are really just personal preference. I don't like the fact that they have gotten rid of a large portion of the customizations for the home page. I also found when I was pulling my tax information for this year, that the reports were not the same as the previous version and I had to build my own. Other then that, I think that it is a good peice of software.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy Microsoft Money Deluxe instead
Review: I was going to purchase the Microsoft Money Standard because it's free after the TaxCut rebate, but I discovered that with the promotional rebates being offered by Amazon.com (expires 2/28/2003) and Microsoft, the Deluxe version of Microsoft Money is less than the Taxcut rebate amount. So make the most of all those rebates and purchase the Deluxe version instead!
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Summary: Money for Dummies
Review: As a longtime user of Quicken, I found Money to be an adequate replacement. Quicken has become more and more "advertisement-centered," which is more than a small annoyance when I paid for the software and not the ads. Money also includes advertisements, but to a much lesser degree. Some of the advertisements are blatant (for financial services) and some are more subtle (check your stocks!). What I least enjoyed about Money is the "dummy" factor: they literally walk you through everything, and have voice help prompts. You can turn off these features, but you have to search the help files to find out how, as they're not readily available. I think it would be a good idea for software programs to offer two 'start-up' options: one for experienced financial software users and one for beginners. My favorite feature of Money is the ease of importing financial information from online services. If you have an American Express card for both yourself and your spouse, you know that Amex assigns two separate card numbers. With Quicken, I would have to manually change the account numbers before downloading the statements for the card; Money allows you to match a download with an existing account, even if the numbers don't match. I also found that Money will import my bank's online statement feature, whereas Quicken would not accomplish this task. Money is a bit different from Quicken - some features are easy to use and some are more difficult or less user-friendly. Keep in mind that no two financial programs are the same when making the transition.
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Summary: Don't bother!
Review: Money2003 does not qualify as an upgrade in ANY sense of the word. It is basically a fix to some of Money2002's many problems. In fact some things don't seem to work as well in this iteration, such as downloading statements from banks and credit card companies. Fortunately I got it for free (after rebates) by purchasing it with another software title. Save your money for Money2004 -- or Quicken!
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Summary: Quicken vs. Money: and the winner is...
Review: Well, I don't either program wins on all counts. I tried both and experienced frustrations with each. In the end, I stuck with Quicken only because Money couldn't import my Quicken data as promised. Both just seem too hard to learn. I am a computer wiz and found them both hard to use -- I can't imagine others trying to get the hang of it. They really need to stop adding features and focus on the usability of the programs. But overall, I would have to say Money did have a cleaner interface that was easier to master. However, both really fail at invoicing. They both claim you can create custom invoices, but the customization is extremely limited and messes things up so much that you eventually just end up using the defaults. So why did I stick with Quicken? Well, Money guarantees that it can import your information from Quicken, but it failed to import my data. Microsoft technical support tried a few simple solutions, but then told me "tough luck." I wan't about to reenter a years worth of info, so I retreated back to Quicken since Money wasn't that much better to make it worth my while.
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Summary: Don't waste money - get Money 2003 Deluxe version instead
Review: Money 2003 would get five stars for me had it not included Kiplinger's Home & Business Attorney. This program is so horribly unbeleivably bad I cannot phathom (a) how Kiplinger is still in business, and (b) how Microsoft came to include this in their otherwise outstanding package. The Kiplinger stuff was obviously written for Windows 3.1 and has not been updated since then. It is *still* using the 16bit version of InstallShield. When run on Windows XP, The installer hangs at 99% for 8-10 minutes before proceeding. This is a well-documented problem with InstallShield from long-ago. After installation, the installer just hangs forever. I gave up at 15 minutes. The Attorney program itself is horrible. It brings up a ... editor that does not even understand spaces or long filenames. The buttons look like Windows 3.1. The program runs in 16bit emulated space, so that definitely means Windows 3.1. The OK button on many dialogs is HUGE and mostly blocked by text entry windows. Truly has to be seen to be believed. Get Money 2003 Deluxe instead. You'll still get TaxCut and the Money 2003 program, which are both very nice programs.
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Summary: not perfect but...
Review: It is only a couple of days I am using this software so I just want to add something that nobody said so far. Like another user I am still using PocketMoney for Palm
and I gave MsMoney a try because I got it for nearly nothing... I red some negative comments about the management of a Flexible Spending Account but I was able to set it up manually. Automatic update with banks/financial institutions? Not too bad: unfortunately my AmEx Corporate is the only one that is not part of the integration, my 401(k) account (Principal) neither. Yes, you can still download a file to import but still... I guess the more users there will be around the more Microsoft and banks will collaborate. The integration with ING Bank or Wachovia is great. Finally one thing that somebody else said: it is TOTALLY customizable.
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