Crossover Gets Quicken

Jeremy White writes: "involved with the Wine project 4 years ago, a major personal goal for me was to switch my wife's computer to Linux. But there was a simple caveat: "No Quicken, No Linux." As of today, CrossOver Office now supports Quicken (and my wife was beta tester #1 *grin*). The new version, 1.2.0, also supports Visio and fixes a raft of bugs. The press release is at Codeweavers and a review can be found here. " I've got a similar situation - been running Quicken for the last ten years, and have only one data section lost, so this is pretty darn cool. And it freakin' works.

Comments

Standard Wine?

[BJH]

Does this work with mainline Wine as well, or is it Crossover-only at the moment?
I know Codeweavers have been good about feeding fixes back into the mainline project (unlike WineX), and I hope they keep it up.

Slightly OT: GnuCash

[Space Coyote]

Was wondering if anyone familiar with Quicken and GnuCash could give a good comparison of the features and usability of both programs, from the standpoint of someone who wants to start managing his or her personal finances. Would it be worth it to buy crossover and quicken, or could the average user get the hang of GnuCash easily enough?

Focus on Linux apps

[papasui]

Whats the point of turning linux into a windows machine? If you want to run Windows programs stabably you have this OS called Windows 2000. Seriously this isn't ment to troll or be a flambait, but the apps make the OS why not focus on making great apps for linux instead of making linux this OS that can run Windows apps.

Re:Focus on Linux apps

[DearSlashdot]

I agree with you to a point. It would be no good to be just a windows clone. However, I think that Quickbooks (which is discussed in the article) is a "killer conversion" app. Many many small businesses run Quickbooks as their mission-critical system. They could get along fine with Mozilla, Staroffice instead of IE or MS office. But the accounting software is the last thing they are going to screw with.

I think this is especially useful when it comes time to expand. When an office suddenly needs two PCs, the logical step is a network. Maybe even a server. That's where sticker shock for a Win2k network kicks in, and where the free (beer) side of Linux can be a huge blessing. Without Quickbooks, moving away from Windows will be painful (espcially since the last time I checked, you can't export your data from Quickbooks).

Re:That's nice.

[Hollins]

All of these nuisances are avoidable in Quicken. Not surprisingly, Microsoft Money is worse. It even hijacks your web browser whenever you visit a site where money can be spent.

In my opinion, the features of Quicken far outweigh its shortcomings. With a bank and brokerage that support online updating, I can download and reconcile all transactions without having to do a cumbersome, and flakey, file import. I pay bills by entering them in the register, then clicking 'online update'. Its investment tracking tools are unsurpassed. It tracks everything from mortgage interest to capital gains to IRA contributions to tell me where I stand with the government at any moment. gnuCash is coming along, but it's closer to managing your finances with a spreadsheet than the features Quicken and Money have. With a little finagling, I've managed to turn off all the ads, and I've never given any information to Intuit's website.

And don't get me started on using Quicken and Turbo Tax in April.

Re:That's nice.

[Hollins]

Here's all the things I had to do that i remember:

• Under the 'General' tab of quicken options, select "Hide advertisements in online financial center"
• Under the 'Startup' tab, select 'none'
• Customize the 'My Finances' page to remove the alerts box. This feature does nothing for me, anyway.
• Right-click the alert bar at the bottom and select the option that removes the alert bar.
• Remove all Quicken items from Windows' Start folder.

That's all I remember. Like I said, it took some doing, but I don't remember seeing an ad since January.

Other "critical" applications?

[Speare]

What other must-have "mission critical" applications does WINE fully support, or will support soon? Long-term Linux users sometimes avoid tasks or fileformats that are only served by certain applications. New adoptees need a transition plan that includes their favorite applications.

Here are a few I could think of, but I expect there are others.

• Macromedia Dreamweaver? Any version 2+?
• Macromedia Flash 5 Editor?
• Stock photo exporters like Hemera Photo-Objects?
• Any recent Adobe Photoshop?
• Any recent Adobe Premiere?
• Any recent Adobe AfterEffects?
• Any recent Adobe [nee Aldus] PageMaker?
• Any recent Adobe Illustrator?
• Any of the Panoramic photograph stitchers?

(I know that there's Linux programs that are almost as nice, or even in some cases better. The Windows ports and additional tools that accompany the free "PanoTools" are far superior to the available Linux/GIMP integration at this point, for example. This is about transitioning people who are lost without some familiar applications.)

Quicken is Spyware

[Pilferer]

Quicken is spyware - or something worse. There are a few DLLs that run in the background, one which contacts Intuit's site every once and a while. It's totally random, and using Ethereal, you can see that it's sending small encrypted packets. It runs all the time, not just when you are using Quicken.

There is no obvious way to disable this. There is an option hidden away in the configuration to "disable background downloading", but you cannot select it! You have to use a "secret key combo" that Intuit's tech support gives out over the phone - "SHIFT-4-CLICK" - in order to select this option.

But here's the kicker - the next time you run Quicken it re-enables this "background downloading" again! If you remove this DLL from the Windows registry, Quicken adds it again the next time you run it.

Intuit says these DLLs are harmless programs that "keep your software up to date and bug free", but the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove, and so difficult to detect, makes me wonder what this is REALLY doing.. and I'm not being paranoid, just curious. It's my computer, not theirs!!

Because it's closed source, we'll never know what it's doing.

I have not seen much talk about this on usenet, etc. Adaware does not catch it.

Look here here for some google hits on the topic. I have not found a thread where someone else has noticed that the SHIFT-4-CLICK method is only *temporary*, and that it comes back again later behind your back..

Anyway, just wanted to rant about this. I find it disturbing that my (former) financial software has such a great need to send stuff in the background without my permission!

Re:Quicken is Spyware

[jehreg]

2 years ago, I had warned their development team that the background transmissions were going to nail them when the community found out.

They worked with us to properly address this, and their development manager (who seemed to have a clue) was very adamant in making sure that no one in the security community would explode, such as putting information screens when you installed and upgraded the program.

We really pushed hard for them to include a "Never contact the Internet, ever!" select button, and they assured us that they would do it.

At some point, they just stopped sending us status reports. I figured that the development manager just left or was canned.

<SARCASM>It's nice to see that the development team was able to keep the marketroids at bay...</SARCASM>

Too bad for them. We were doing this on a volunteer basis.

Submitter of the story also is CEO of Code Weavers

[.tom.]

In such a story praising a product, it should IMHO be highlighted (or at least made clear) that the original story was submitted by the CEO of the company who makes that product.

No wonder why the post makes no references to free or open source software that may suit the more or less same needs.

In such cases, I think moderators should maybe not quote word for word the text submitted, but should put the story submitted into some perspective, and add some information.

Run as root?

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

OK, so it runs. Does it require you to run it as root? Quicken on 2000 must be run as Administrator*; try to run it as a non-privileged user and it fails. I'm a sysadmin, and had to install Quicken for the department (bitch-)secretary(-from-hell), and it flat-out refused to run as anything less than a local admin. I called Intuit (not made easier by the fact that they hide their phone number, encouraging you to use their useless website instead), and finally found a tech with a clue (about the fourth person to whom I spoke). He confirmed for me that you do, in fact, have to run it as admin, and that there's no way around it.* I had to give the secretary (also an incredible dolt, and very protective of "her" machine) local admin, which she has used to install unauthorized software, disjoin herself from the domain (woo-hoo! I only support our domain--she's fucked, particularly for backups), etc. That one poorly-designed program has opened me up to all sorts of trouble. In any case, I swore that day that I'd never use an Intuit product for any purpose, and I'd make sure others are aware of their boneheaded design. Use it at your own risk.

*I'm told there's another method to get it running as a non-privileged user, that being to specifically grant write-access to all the directories that the program uses, but I haven't been able to try it, because of the aforementioned secretary's protective attitude (don't touch my computer!), and since she has disjoined, I don't care anymore anyway.