It was bad enough when Quicken simply littered your desktop with icons linking to Quicken Loans, Free Credit Reports (which are never free) and a sundry of other financial pay-to-play products. Now they've taken things to a whole new level with ads literally BUILT INTO the GUI (Graphic User Interface: the 'skin' with which you engage with the program). An example: in the new 'refinance calculator' there is a large banner ad for CHASE BANK. The refinance calculator itself is poor and majorly inferior to free ones available online, but more on that later. I don't expect to pay upwards of $50.00 for a piece of software that contains banner ads! That is simply unacceptable. In freeware, I understand it, but not in something I paid full retail for!
Adding insult to injury, INTUIT has actually removed one of the best features of previous Quicken releases, the CASH FLOW monthly chart. They've replaced it with a projected balances chart which is ugly, harder to read, and doesn't convey nearly as much information as the previous version. A line chart is inferior for the purpose, and INTUIT hasn't even managed to make the data points (low and high balance points along the chart) display the actual balance when you mouse over them. This is a miserably bad design--they've managed to take a very useful tool and turn it into garbage.
The supposed new features are junk. The refinance calculator is extremely simplistic compared to far better online versions (check out Equitrend Financial Calculators if you're looking for sophisticated, free calculators). It doesn't allow the user to enter current mortgage interest rate or PMI, and instead makes you enter the total payment and then the "impound / escrow amount." If you have your mortgage set-up to be tracked in Quicken, the tool cannot incorporate that data into your analysis. You must manually enter everything. The tool also does not take into account the tax implications of your refinance. Overall it is a tacked on, basic calculator that is nearly useless.
The obligatory re-skin of the program (which INTUIT trots out each year rather than making substantial or meaningful changes) is adequate, but unnecessary. Every year they tweak fonts, colors, and layout, and design elements. This year is no exception. None of the changes make the program more efficient for the end user. I don't have a problem with utilitarian designs, as long as the underlying software is substantial. INTUIT seems to leverage much of their development budget into GUI tweaks, while doing little to improve the software itself.
Another major issue is that INTUIT cannot manage to keep their data file consistent from year to year. 2011 is no exception and required me to convert my 2010 data file. Admittedly this was much more painless than the massive difficulty many experienced with upgrading from 2008 or 2009 to 2010. I wish that the developers at INTUIT would make a forwards compatible data file type and just stick with it.
SUMMARY:
PROS:
1) Potentially better GUI (depending on your preferences)
CONS:
1) Ads built into the GUI itself
2) Removal of a significant feature (cash flow and balance chart)
3) No substantial improvements to the underlying programs
4) Added 'features' are poor quality, even when compared with free alternatives
5) Requires yet another data-file conversion
6) Expensive! Especially considering the ads built into the program
FINAL THOUGHTS:
What am I getting for my money here? If you love this version of Quicken, can you kindly explain to me why it is worth upgrading? I have yet to find a single compelling reason. Am I missing something or did I just flush my money down the toilet? Quicken Deluxe 2011 - [Old Version]
I have been a loyal user of Quicken since 1994 and upgraded whenever each new version was released. This is the first time that I have returned the product. One of the features that I use every day is the Cash Flow center in the Planning tab. This has been removed. It is completely incomprehensible to me why they would remove this feature. At a glance, it completely encapsulated my cash flow for the month, both graphically and numerically. Their new "Projected Balances" feature is completely inferior. When I checked out the Quicken forums to find out where it had been hidden, my worst fears were confirmed about its removal. There was discussion about Quicken attempting to simply the product, but I don't understand why they have to remove features for the savvy user. My fear is that this feature is gone for good and I will be stuck with Quicken 2010 until they no longer support it!
Some things have improved with Quicken 2011, some things seem not to work as well as previous versions and things quicken can't couldn't do in the past it still can't do.
Negatives (after a couple of days):
1) If you trade options or anything but the most mundane investment products, forget about tracking them in Quicken. Prior versions couldn't do it and 2011 can't either. I dont' even bother to download invesmtent transactions anymore. It's easier to track them in excel. At least I can download option quotes in excel. Forget it in quicken.
2) Downloading credit card / bank transactions has become more cumbersome with each new version of quicken. It's almost to the point where it just isn't worth it anymore. A major issue for me is an almost complete inability of quicken to correctly match downloaded transactions. Even though I have no transactions that need to be matched, quicken just arbitrarily (seems that way anyway) picks old transactions to match newly downloaded transactions to. You can't turn off automatic transaction matching (this would be a big improvement in my opinion). You have to manually unmatch each downloaded transaction before you can accept it. Years ago this was one of the best features of quicken. Now it's one of the most frustrating.
You can't download transaction from some banks until after their monthly closing date. What use it that? If I only want to see transactions once a month I can just look at the monthly statement!
3) Copying old transactions from previous versions of quicken to the new version is a lot more cumbersome than it needs to be. You can do it if you know the secret codes to add to the exported data files for the account types quicken doesn't want you to be able to import, but why should that be necessary?
4) "Renaming rules" seem to use the same corrupt logic as the download matching. I can't imagine why anyone would want to abuse themselves by using this "capability". At least you can turn this worthless feature off. Wish I could turn off transaction matching as well.
Positives:
1) The annoying quicken starup chime doesn't seem to be as obnoxiously loud as the previous version.
2) 2011 seems snappier and more responsive than the previous version.
3) Wish there were more, but that's all I've got.
Ed - Quicken Deluxe - Quicken - Financial Software - Personal Finance'
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