Tsaiberspace

After three years of using Quicken 2004 Premier for Windows, I decided to upgrade to a more recent version. I had been underwhelmed with the “Premier” version (it promises extra bells whistles for tracking investments, but I didn’t really see any value-add over my Quicken 2003 Deluxe), so I went back to the Deluxe version.

I did a few things differently this time:

• I skipped retail and bought it on eBay last week ($49.99 retail, $20.50 for me on eBay).
• I had it shipped to my office address instead of my apartment complex. For the past few years, I’ve been spoiled by managed complexes with offices that receive all your packages. We’ll be moving into a house next month with no such luxuries, so I wanted to give the office shipping department a test run before I ordered anything more serious.

A retail CD with no box arrived in the office mail today, in a plain padded envelope. With some small amount of trepidation (What if it’s a fake? What if the CD has viruses on it?), I backed up my Quicken files, opened the CD, scanned it for viruses, and installed it onto my computer.

It was a very anti-climactic experience. Both the Quicken software itself and my data file were upgraded in-place without a hitch.

What differences did I notice from Quicken 2004 Premier?

• The online one-step update now runs in the background when launched, instead of completely taking over your Quicken session and preventing you from doing something else. This is nice. You can click “One-Step Update”, then go back to reconciling your bank and credit-card statements while other transactions are downloaded in the background.
• I can download transactions directly from within Quicken from more of my institutions.
• The color scheme is different, and you get to choose from a few different color schemes (green, blue, etc.).
• Following a disturbing trend, the UI features bigger fonts and bigger buttons, resulting in an effective loss of screen real estate. I understand that there is a legitimate need to increase font and icon sizes to compensate for the ever-increasing resolution of modern LCD screens, but I wish for once that software writers would cater to geeks like me who actually want to get work done on their computers.
• A few things here and there seemed a little slicker, like navigating between different areas of Quicken. Nothing astonishing, and nothing I can quite explicitly identify, but something noticeable. Or maybe I just wanted to justify the $20.50 as something not ill-spent.

What remained the same from my old copy of Quicken 2004 Premier?

• Initial installation is easy. It also leaves a smattering of cross-promoted products all over your Windows desktop. Enough already, I already paid you for the software, do you now have to sell me some extras? I wonder how much money Intuit actually makes from installing icons for MasterCard and CitiBank on the desktop after installation.
• Pretty much everything else.

In summary:

• My office appears to be fine for receiving packages.
• eBay appears to be fine for buying software.
• I will be sticking with Deluxe from here on out. Premier doesn’t offer me anything useful. It does offer more investment-related “advice,” but it’s not that useful.
• The upgrade from 2004 to 2007 might be worth the $20 purchase price, for increased compatibility with financial institutions’ online operations. For example, with Quicken 2007, I can download my Bank of America and Wells Fargo transactions directly from within Quicken. With Quicken 2004, I had to go to the respective websites and download my transactions myself. It’s admittedly just a small plus, but a plus nevertheless.

All in all, not bad for $20.50 for a three-year upgrade. It’s definitely not worth $49.99 for a yearly upgrade. It’s probably not even worth $20.50 for a yearly upgrade.

Edit: Actually, it turns out I have to upgrade, because Quicken only provides online services for products up to three years old. See their sunset policy for details.