Rating: 
Summary: Run, don't walk, AWAY from this program...
Review: I have been a loyal Quicken 99 Deluxe user for five years. In the past, I have tried the 2000 and 2002 versions but have always returned to '99 for various reasons. After trying 2004 Premier, I am throwing in the towel on Intuit and going elsewhere. In the first two minutes of operation, there were several apparent problems. Reports would only print if you manually printed each individual page seperately. The program failed several times, abruptly shutting down for no reason. I would enter my entire portfolio into the setup account function only to see all the work disappear when I hit "done" (I guess the software takes "done" literally). The import/export function never worked properly, often omitting portions of transactions. To add injury to insult, there is no email support and phone support is $$$$/minute (a free chat is available but, for some reason, is closed on Thursday and Fridays). Nothing like having to pay to have Intuit correct its own problems. Intuit seems to have abondoned the concept of creating decent products. After the TurboTax disaster of last year, one would have thought they would have learned. Take it from me, they didn't - run away from this software as fast as you can.
Rating: 
Summary: Quicken 2004 stability is an issue
Review: I have been a user and advocate of Quicken since 1995, and have faithfully upgraded each year. Since 2000 I have been running Quicken on a Compaq Presario 1800T laptop (192MB Mem, Windows Me). After installing Quicken 2003 Basic last year, I started experiencing occasional screen freezes, which could only be corrected by a system restart. This year, egged on by a nice rebate, and the requirement to move from Basic to something better (for transaction downloads and 401K tracking), I upgraded to Quicken 2004 Premier. Little did I know, that the problems I had with Quicken 2003 would be exaggerated in Quicken 2004. What a change for the worse this upgrade has been. A data-entry session that used to take me 5 minutes, now takes 15, as typically, I will have to reboot my PC two or three times during the process. I have submitted a bug report, describing three issues characterized by Windows blue screens, screen freezes, and spurious Exceptions in Windows system processes. These issues are only apparent on my system when Quicken is running. My conclusion. Windows ME, the Compaq laptop's hardware/video drivers and Quicken 2004 Premier, when combined, do not make a good match. The last stable Quicken version I used on this platform was Quicken 2002. On the positive side I do like the features that Quicken has to offer, but in my case, this is outweighed by the negative effect of an unstable installation. My ray of hope is that some of these problems may be fixed in the next patch release. : This refers to Quicken 2004 Premier R3
Rating:
Summary: What a desaster!
Review: I have been fairly happy so far with Quicken, but this version is plain terrible. The upgrade seemed to go OK at first, and the setup reported it had all data converted. But as soon as the program ran for the first time, I was in for a surprise! First of all, the program didn't even show up. Then, I relized that it was simply positioned somewhere off screen, so I couldn't see it. I can maximize it through the task bar, and sometimes, I can move it using the keyboard. But doing this every time it starts up is a pain! Also, many things just do not work. For instance, the net-worth graph is totally broken if you show more than a year of data. And if you dare to change the date range more than once or twice, the program crashes to the desktop. If you do that a few times, you have to reboot your machine, because Quicken crashes on startup! Also, I just plain hate how Quicken now keeps make you do certain things a certain way. This seems to get worse with every version. It tries to upload all your financial data to the web. It also tries to sucker you into all kinds of other deals Quicken offers. There are advertisements all over the place. And there are a number of dialogs that come up every time and you can' get rid of. Reconcile a credit card account and it asks you ever time whether you want to write a check. No, I don't, thank you! (I am paying my CCs online). Next time again: "Do you want to write a check?" NO, I DON'T! And on the third card you enter, again: "Are you sure you do not want to write a check?" YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT I AM! Aren't those types of things standard these days? They are in all the apps I build... And finally, Quicken just doesn't seem to improve the way I want it to. I guess that's just because my needs are not mainstream. Or are they? I had been hoping for a way to automatically update currency exchange rates. I had also hoped for a way to indicate that I only own a certain percentage of a property, so it shows up right in the net worth calculation. I had also hoped for better ways to analyze my portfolio with much easier ways to see how well each holding does year-by-year, rather than all-time. This is especially true for stock I have all sold, but I still would like to go back and see how well it performed and (more importantly) how it developed since then to see whether I made the right decision. I would also like a better stock-wish-list feature that would allow me to track much more information about stock I am considering to buy. Those would all be nice features. Of course right now I would be happy if the thing would run for more than 3 minutes without crashing. Maybe I should switch to MS Money after all...
Rating:
Summary: INVESTORS, DO NOT UPGRADE - FLAWED
Review: I have been happy with Quicken 2003 and I recently purchased Quicken 2004 as an upgrade. Upon installation, all of my investment data was incorrectly converted or not converted at all. ALL of my investment accounts are now inaccurate. I am terribly dissatisfied with this product. Their website seems to attribute conversion problems to "bad data files." I find that extremely hard to believe unless the user was having trouble with cross-linked files prior to the conversion. In my opinion, the suggestion that this type of problem is caused by cross linked/bad data files is lazy, inaccurate and unacceptable. It's a way of saying "we really don't know what causes this bug, but here's our suggestion to throw the blame back on you, Mr. Consumer - we blame your computer system." I've suggested to Intuit that they stop putting so much time and effort into making this product look pretty with all of the bullet point box features and focus on a solid release candidate with no severe bugs. In my opinion, this product is about 3 months shy of being commercially acceptable. This bug will cost me countless hours - probably well over 100 - in sorting and reconciling all of my investments. It's ridiculous really. Based on what I've read in public forums, I would assert that this product is responsible for countless lost hours among many unsatisfied customers. Unfortunately, because of the nature of this problem and the financial dependence I have on this product, I no longer trust this product nor do I trust other products released by Intuit. I will go through the excruciating process of reconciliation simply to get everything back to current/accurate so I can convert to another program - MS Money, etc. I will not purchase another Quicken product and I recommend that others do their homework before purchasing this drink coaster (errr, product) as an upgrade. Personal money management is a serious issue - in my opinion, being accurate and clean should take priority over everything else. I'm so burned, if I could rate this product a big fat zero or go into negative territory I would - but if you're read this far, you now know that my rating of '1' is really a z-e-r-o.
Rating:
Summary: Bugs to the Point of Giving Up
Review: I have been using Quicken for at least 10 years. I upgraded from 2002 to 2004 about two weeks ago. The program hits a bug about every other time I run the program. It shuts down and then I have to bring it up again. Note that I have fixed the Net Worth graphing problem described on the technical support site. I still get lots of bugs. Do not upgrade to this product at this time. Maybe in 3-6 months? I am not sure. I am going to try to get my money back and go back to 2002. I will need to retype two weeks worth of transactions and any other changes I have made! That is how frustrated I am.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Disappointed Loyal Quicken User of 10+ Years
Review: I have been using Quicken for years and did not quite mind the little things. However, after upgrating to this 2004 'Premier' version, I am SO disappointed to discover SO MANY bugs.
Problem 1: My short sell and cover transactions show up with over 10K more gain under Return YTD than should be.
Problem 2: All my 2004 stock transactions show up as N/A under Return YTD although they clearly have gains under Gain/Loss. But if I changed the buy date from 2004 to 2003, then everything is calculated fine!
Problem 3: The nice cut/copy/paste fearture of investment transactions rifht from the transaction display was token away.
Problem 4: Transaction entry must be done via a separate window and it does not provide a feature to copy from another transaction which is almost identical.
Problem 5: Help window to submit bugs disappears each time you go back to Quicken to look up something so that you will need to write down all the info on paper and start all over again...
I use Quicken to primarily track my investment. This version added some nice feattures and a lot of fluff, but lacks quality and is much less efficient with investment tracking/viewing compared to 2002 version.
Rating:
Summary: What a Disaster!!
Review: I have been using Quicken since 1996 and upgrade every year to get the newest enhancements - 2004 has been such a disaster after installing, I am still getting memory errors and can not even open the program - I am so disapppointed in Intuit that they would release a product so full of bugs. I now have to reinstall 2003 - this is my last upgrade in a long time. I am returning for my money back!! Intuit you owe your customers reliable products that work!
Rating:
Summary: Don't Even Think About Getting This Upgrade
Review: I have loved Quicken until this upgrade. None of the version updates have corrected the bugs in this software. It runs poorly under Windows XP and even worse when I tried to use it on my laptop w/ME. Don't touch this one. I am very diappointed with Intuit at this point.
Rating: 
Summary: QUICKEN 2004 PREMIER
Review: I have used previous versions of Quicken (the latest 2000) and have always been very pleased. I was so pleased with version 2000 that I was reluctant to move to 2004 because I heard it could be cumbersome. Since I was notified by Intuit that they would no longer support version 2000, downloading quotes, etc. I felt that I needed to take the chance. I decided to go with Quicken Premier 2004 this time and am glad I did. Everything that I have wanted to do has been available and works very well.
Rating:
Summary: QUICKEN 2004 PREMIER
Review: I have used previous versions of Quicken (the latest 2000) and have always been very pleased. I was so pleased with version 2000 that I was reluctant to move to 2004 because I heard it could be cumbersome. Since I was notified by Intuit that they would no longer support version 2000, downloading quotes, etc. I felt that I needed to take the chance. I decided to go with Quicken Premier 2004 this time and am glad I did. Everything that I have wanted to do has been available and works very well.
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