Rating: 
Summary: Too Much Work to Get Started
Review: I had been a Quicken user since the early 90's but switched to Microsoft Money in 1999. My new computer came with Money Basic 2002 installed but I recently purchased Quicken Deluxe 2003. Thus far I have spent close to 10 hours trying to get my data transferred from Money to Quicken. It is incredibly difficult and inaccurate if you try to automate the process. Because I don't have every single statement from every account I own, I cannot just go and type in every transaction by hand to get the accuracy I need. I think I have all of my investments in place, but the portfolio still will only update 4 security prices, my mutual funds. It does nothing with the stocks I own, though I have gone over the stock accounts a dozen times each. If I hadn't already spent $$$ on this software I would go right back to Money. It very well may take me a month of sitting in front of my computer to get to the point where I need to be with my finances on Quicken, so I am still using Money Basic 2002 to keep track of everything. At this point, Quicken has become my white whale and I am determined to make it work. On the plus side, Quicken seems much faster than Money.
Rating: 
Summary: Use the $$ for an Upgrade to buy your wife dinner
Review: I had Quicken 2000 on an older machine and when I purchased a new one, I thought I might upgrade. Boy was that a mistake! I actually got my money back and restored my 2000 program. Spend the $$ for the upgrade on a dinner for your loved one and don't commit to the hours and hours of time needed to set up and baby the product.
Rating:
Summary: Quicken 2003 breaks functionality that was in Quicken 2000
Review: The user-friendly investment alerts mechanism that was in Quicken 2000 is completely destroyed. Someone should be fired over designing such a terrible interface.
It now longer tracks investment in you security list unless you include them in your watchlist. Quicken also deviously attempts to upload all your portfolio information to their website.The alerts that you manually set get automatically reset (you have no choice in this) if the limits are met. This means that if you don't react upon the alert during the same session, you will have to remember the alert for a later session becauae Quicken no longer remembers it either - quite poor design. I wonder what they do with that personal data?
Rating:
Summary: Nice upgrade but slow and buggy
Review: I've used Quicken for years, and purchased Quicken 2003 as an upgrade from Quicken 98. I've now used it for about 6 months and am fairly happy with it, with the exception of speed (it's s-l-o-w) and it's a bit buggy, occasionally trying to "help me out" by doing things that just don't make any sense. I like being able to download transactions from my credit card companies, and it works great for two of my banks. But the third bank (JP Morgan/Chase) apparently doesn't work well with Quicken, even though Quicken lists them in the "Supported Bank Partners" area. Quicken will only let me enter a password that's 4 characters long, and my Chase password is 8 characters long. I contacted Intuit, and they said that it was an error in the account profile info transmitted by Chase and that they could help me fix it - at the friendly rate of $2/minute! Any company that charges support to help fix inconsistencies like this is, by definition, NOT customer-focused. So I'm using Quicken only until I can find something from a company that I feel better about supporting.
Rating: 
Summary: Looks great, worth upgrading
Review: Pros: The new interface is clean and intuitive. Intuit has seriously rethought the product's design and they got it right. Quicken 2003 delivers a lot of information without cluttering the screen. Fantastic investment tools. Upgrade process went very smoothely. Cons: Too many ads. Don't like Accounts and Calendar listings popping up in child windows. Don't completely understand why the 'Banking Center' is now the 'Cash Flow Center'. Can no longer do online updates in the background. Verdict: With Quicken 2003, Intuit has redeemed itself after its shoddy 2002 product. Still the best personal financial management tool out there. Lots of nice enhancements. I'm glad I upgraded. Current Quicken users should seriously consider upgrading to 2003. Money users who track investments should also switch over to Quicken.
Rating:
Summary: low software quality?
Review: I was a loyal Quicken user (used quicken 98) and just bought Quicken 2003 Deluxe although I got Microsoft Monday as installed software on my computer. I am very disappointed of this version. Virtually I didn't use the new version because I cannot register it. The registeration pages reported a script error. Then I went to the Quicken website, and found a description of the program and a "solution" telling me to un-install and re-install to solve the problem. I did it three times but failed to make the registration work. If you think registraion may not be a problem, think it twice. Quicken 2003 will stop to download stock and fund prices without registration! This behavior make my investment portfolio ugly: all stock/fund prices are zero, but there are cash flowouts, thus my investment value is a large negative number! ... I downloaded and installed an update, but that did not solve the problem. They are other things that annoy me, as I am a computer professional myself. When I was searching the solution to my problem, I scanned the descriptions of other problems. Some problems seem to be typical for software without quality control and thorough testing. One example is "stopping responding when registering", and the answer is that the internet connection may not be available. Normally software should check this situation and report to the user instead of hanging there. I stopped and switched back to Microsoft Money. Maybe Quicken is not so terrible as I thought because I didn't really use the new version. On the other hand, I am uneasy with Money, too. Although the quality of the software itself seems to be better, the security issue of Windows and the aggresive nature of Microsoft bother me. But now no good choice exists.
Rating:
Summary: slooooow
Review: I have been a loyal Quicken user, but this product has been a disaster. I have plenty of memory, according to its requirements, but that doesn't seem to matter. The program is achingly slow. A previous reviewer wrote that it takes three seconds for a pull-down menu to appear. I wish! It takes 15 to 20 seconds for me. Imagine how long it takes when I try to do something more complicated. Also, many of the new features are not intuitive. I've had enough frustration to switch back to try to switch back to an earlier version of Quicken--or to Microsoft Money.
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I used earlier versions of QUICKEN for years. Putting in this version was a big mistake. Not only is it buggy (it has totally messed up previously reconciled entries), support is totally non-existant. Even trying to search the "knowledge base", on the support site, is a painful experience. The web site says not to expect an answer to reporting a problem. What type of support is that? I could do better manually than this version of the product.
Rating:
Summary: Try GNUcash if you can
Review: This program is not that great at all. Like various Microsoft products, it insists on second-guessing you. Furthermore, it has terrible and NON-INTUITIVE management of withdrawals and deposits between accounts. If you have a checking account and a savings account, and download the transactions for both into Quicken, it will completely bork transfers between one account and another. You'll have to manually correct that yourself. Furthermore, lets say that you transfer $100 from Savings to Checking. If you do this, it should say "withdrawal to checking" on the Savings register, and "deposit from savings" on the checkings register. But it doesn't. It uses Withdrawal on both. Very illogical. This program needs some way to better communicate internally what's happening between accounts, because it's a total mess in that respect. I'd suggest you try using GNUcash if you can. It's free to download, and you get free upgrades. Your also welcomed to redistribute it and modify it, if you can, to suit your needs. Check it out at http://www.gnucash.org It's a little bit technical, and offers many features that would only be useful to a professional accountant. But better overdone than underdone.
Rating:
Summary: new version waste of money
Review: Buying the new version is simply a waste of money.
| 
