But I will migrate my old Quicken data over to Essentials - so if I have to check any records, at least I won't hurt my eyes in the process. Quicken Essentials doesn't change that it's just too useful to be able to check my records from any (secure) Web-connected computer. So what did I do? Several months ago, after I'd reviewed for the second time, I elected to keep my test account active and use that for day-to-day financial management. Longtime readers may recall that at the start of 2009, I noted that I desperately needed to extricate my financial records from the obsolete Mac edition of Quicken.
#QUICKEN ESSENTIALS FOR MAC BUDGET UPDATE#
In the end, I wound up arriving at about the same verdict as veteran tech writer Glenn Fleishman reached in his expert-oriented review for the Seattle Times he concluded, "the program feels much more like a sketch of what a full Quicken update might look like." My verdict: Essentials isn't that bad for basic financial management but still needs serious work. Unfortunately, that did no better than the old Quicken 2007 Mac release at the crucial test of downloading account information for me.) (To get a third-party comparison, I also tried out IGG Software's iBank, since I'd once publicly wondered if that application would benefit from Intuit's inaction. This wasn't a huge stretch for me, as I have often cursed the complexity of previous Quicken releases when I just wanted a simple chart of my cash flow. So at the risk of going easy on Quicken Essentials, I tried to assess it from the perspective of somebody who just wants to know where the money came from, where it's going and if the monthly bottom line will be positive or negative - not someone attempting to run a freelance business through the program.
But I happen to read my colleague Michelle Singletary's work and know that the contingent of Quicken experts is dwarfed by the population of people who desperately need some financial guidance. It would not have been too hard to itemize the features missing from the new release and pronounce it inadequate on those grounds alone. But it also junks many long-standing Quicken features, not all of which appealed only to Quicken extremists. This $69.99 application looks and acts like a normal Mac program and exhibits much of the clean, refined design of, the Web-based personal-finance site that Intuit bought last year. Intuit's new Quicken Essentials for Mac breaks with that heritage in good and bad ways. (It's probably for the best that I never went to the absurd extreme of setting up a cash-only "Rob's wallet" account in that program.) Let me put it this way: When I spend too much at the farmers' market, I feel a little Quicken guilt about my cash purchases there escaping that program's scrutiny. That experience has left me with a profound dislike of most recent Mac releases of Quicken but also an excessive familiarity with its mind-set.
#QUICKEN ESSENTIALS FOR MAC BUDGET SOFTWARE#
No, not in the sense of my throwing in too many parenthetical remarks (oh, really?) or an excess of em-dashes - if you say so - but in the context of my having used various versions of Intuit's Quicken software since 1997 or so. When I put together today's review, I tried not to write like myself.
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