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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.
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?
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Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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.
- 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.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.
(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.)
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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!
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.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!