Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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I'll be blunt. Microsoft Money is the most important application that I use. My entire financial life is in Money. I use practically every feature and been using the product since 1998. I've also upgraded to every money version since I first started using it. However, Money 2005 left a sour taste in my mouth that both Money 2006 and now Money 2007 have not adequately addressed. Money is slow, and my file is now huge at close to 40 MB (which I'm guessing contributes to the slowness). I do not use any of the MSN online features after a DISASTER in 2005 when it completely and utterly devastated my accounts to the point that I had to go back 3 months and re-create my financial picture transaction by transaction. I have about 15 accounts in money that range from checking and credit card to car and house loans. I wasn't joking when I mentioned that each and every penny is accounted for.
Why do I do this? Dunno, habit I guess. I like going to one place to see everything. In doing so I've realized the benefits of having pretty accurate tax withholding, decent portfolio tools and budget tracking.
Anyway, both Money and Quicken are now available in their 2007 versions. I've contemplated the idea of giving Quicken a try (the last time I used Quicken was the Mac versions that I started with in College and stopped using when I installed Money 1999). BTW Money was the main reason I bought a PC to use at home back in 1999.
According to this web site there are 8 new features for personal users. Excuse me? I've also installed Money 2007 and can't tell you what exactly is improved about the Tax Estimator... it still won't do Alternative Minimum Tax or State Tax Estimates. The rest of the features are just not interesting to me.
Now, according to the Quicken website, there are 123 new improvements in Quicken 2007. A quick glance at that list has me going "Yes, Yes, Yes!!!".... oh, these are improvements to Quicken, not Money. Darn. I would pay $50 for the ability to simply attach all my tax documents or other digitized items to transactions.
So, for the first time in close to a decade, I am going to plunk down some Money for Quicken and kick the tires a bit. Making a switch like this is a huge investment in time for me, but I'm simply afraid that what I read in this post by Phil Su 2 years ago is still true today.
I'll let you know how it goes.