MacUser's 4.5-mouse rating of the Quicken 6.0 Deluxe CD-ROM (April '96, page 40) was outrageously generous. It was probably the nicest thing anyone has done for Intuit since the Justice Department annulled its ill-fated marriage to Microsoft.
Quicken 6.0 Deluxe -- it should really be called Quicken 5.5 -- has two significant flaws. As an upgrader from 5.0 (as well as 4.0), I found that this upgrade added nothing important. Compare this with the upgrade from 4.0 to 5.0, which provided a cleaner interface and a graphical icon bar.
Most egregious, however, are the many substantial differences between the Mac and Windows versions of the Deluxe CD-ROM. The Windows version includes the following: Tradeline Stock Trading Guide, Morningstar Mutual Fund Finder, Tax Estimator, The Wall Street Journal Personal Finance Guide, The Wall Street Journal Video Guide, and a library of U.S. government publications. For $59, Mac users get only the mutual-fund finder. It's infuriating, since none of these Windows modules would be all that difficult to port to the Mac -- they are essentially only databases.
I urge anyone thinking about upgrading to wait for a version that substantially improves on Quicken 5.0 and to hold out for parity between the Mac and Windows versions.
Barry L. Ritholtz
ritholtz@aol.com
As good as Quicken might be, I think it was unfair of you not to mention Intuit's false advertising for Quicken 6. "Online banking" is promoted on the package, but you have to call Intuit to request the 6.5 upgrade (6.2 is on the floppies and CD-ROM in the shrink-wrapped package). Also, numerous banks support online banking for Quicken users, but exclusively for PC users. Add to this the loss of stability in going from Quicken 5 to 6 and the huge amount of bugs that cropped up between 6.2 and 6.5, and you've got a product that no longer deserves the mouse rating it received.
I've been a Quicken user for over three years and will continue using it, because there is no close second. But I have given up counting on Intuit for reliable information about its product and take extreme measures to ensure that my Quicken data has not become corrupted. Just because a product is better than all its competitors doesn't mean it's worthy of a high mouse rating.
Todd C. Merrill
tcmerrill@tasc.com
/ Quicken 6.0 enables Mac users to obtain electronic banking from those institutions that offer this service. Unfortunately, it's true that many banks that advertise Quicken electronic-banking services don't offer them to Mac clients. / JSA
