Description:
With Intuit Quicken 2001 Deluxe, it really is possible to have a paperless home office, as long as you have Internet access--and, of course, you make sure to file your financial documents in another room of the house. Intuit's latest release of the popular personal-finance/home-business software breaks new ground in its tighter integration of the Web-based services at Quicken.com, with its hard-drive-based number-crunching software. College-planning calculators, 401(k) advice, and home-purchase calculators all are summoned by a click on a tab in the software--and a swift launch of your Web browser. "So, what," you say? "I can find those financial calculators anywhere online, not just at Quicken.com"? Well, the best aspect of all of this Web-enabling is the amount of typing that it saves you at the front end. The biggest hurdle to starting with any of these home-finance programs has been that you've got to input the data from your bank statements, checkbook, and ATM slips by hand to get any real sense of your finances. Thanks to the broadened online account- access capability of the new Quicken 2001 Deluxe, and an online bank account, you can download all of that information from your bank, and import it to your Quicken application. By the same token, you can make transfers and payments over the Internet by using your Quicken software, or export your stock portfolio information to a secure area of Quicken.com, so as to benefit from online stock updates and other investor information. Intuit also has worked to make Quicken 2001 Deluxe more cohesive internally--you can perform global find-and-replace operations, instead of jumping from file to file, hoping for answers. You can set Quicken to notify you of tax deadlines and upcoming bills, as well as when the software itself is about to need updating. It's also a little easier to set up the program to track those transactions of yours that are tax-deductible. This version for Macintosh is not perfect, by any means, although it's closer to its PC counterpart in terms of functionality. Mac users now get preset access to more banks than in previous versions, but not as many as would make online banking setup a breeze. To take advantage of the new online/offline leverage that Quicken 2001 Deluxe promises, it's best to have a fast connection to the Internet, and be at peace with the fact that some amount of real-world setup still is necessary to make this software sing online. --Elizabeth Aoki
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