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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.

17 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Slightly OT: GnuCash by Space+Coyote · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash by athakur999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I tried using GNUcash a while ago. I don't know about Quicken, but at least compared to MS Money it definately fell short. GNUcash does a fair of telling you where you've been, but doesn't seem to have any functionality of telling you where you're going.

      For example, in Money I can put in a schedule of all my paychecks, bills, etc., as well estimates of my monthly budget (how much I spend on gas, dining out, etc.). Money can them show me a pretty line graph of a day by day estimate of what my balance is going to look like for the next month, three months, year, whatever. This lets me locate possible trouble points well ahead of time and plan around them, instead of risking overdrafting my account.

      You can also put in all your loans, credit cards, etc. with their interest rates, and put in how much you want to pay per month. Money can split up that money and tell you the best way to pay things off while minimizing your interest payments.

      GNUcash may have these features now, if so please tell us!

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      "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
    2. Re:Slightly OT: GnuCash by jsled · · Score: 5, Informative

      Scheduled Transactions are in CVS now, and could use some Feedback; they'll definitely be in 1.8, which we are hoping to get out in a couple/few months.

      The more forward-looking stuff I hope to add for 2.0, which is quite a ways off. If you're interested in jumping in and getting something basic [like a report which would contain some of the functionality] done for 1.8, please do so. :)

  2. Why not support the native Linux alternative? by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why not give Kapital, put out by The Kompany, a try? Kapital is essentially a klone (pun intended) of Quicken for Linux. From what I read on their site, it has most of the features of Quicken, but no automatic online bank dowloads.

  3. Focus on Linux apps by papasui · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Focus on Linux apps by thales · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Even worse, what's the point of giving software venders an excuse not to port software over to Linux?

      Commodore introduced the C128 that could run Aplications in C128 mode or C64 mode. Allmost no aplications were developed for C128 mode because all the C128 users could run C64 Aplications in C64 mode.

      IBM had OS/2 that could run Windows Aplications, and few venders bothered with writting OS/2 native aplications.

      There is little chance that Wine will ever run Windows applications as good as they run on Windows. There is a chance that they will run good enough to give venders an excuse not to bother creating real Linux versions of their software.

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      Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
  4. Re:Slightly OT: MS Money by slickwillie · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does it automatically schedule version upgrades and payments to M$, or do you have to put those in manually?

  5. Re:For those asking about rolling in changes to Wi by jeremy_white · · Score: 5, Informative

    The patches will start rolling in next week as we merge our tree with the WineHQ tree.
    We only keep Wine patches out while we're stabilizing a version of CrossOver.
    Cheers,
    Jeremy

  6. Many Windows Apps are better by Planesdragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't want to run "windows programs" stabiliy. I want to run the best software on my pc--and much of the time, that's software that only works on windows.

    Face it; Linux has a piddly market penetration, so bad that it's well nigh impossible to make money supporting it all. A small company (or just a well-run, tight margins, efficient company) that only has the time to develop for one platform will choose windows; unless they're serious hardware or a custom solution, they'd be foolish not to.

    By letting Linux run windows apps, Linux makes all those developers that are windows only potential allies, instead of the definite enemies that are now. If your reveune model depends on windows being on the desktop, you're not going to take kindly to efforts to replace it with something else that won't run your program. If this something else *will* run your program, as well as windows will and on the same hardware, then you've nothing to worry about.

  7. Re:That's nice. by Hollins · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.
  8. Re:Prices... by gmhowell · · Score: 5, Funny

    Except:

    Time: Priceless

    Quicken + Crossover Office
    Adjusted Total: $114.90

    GNU Cash
    Adjusted Total: $->infinity

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    Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
  9. Other "critical" applications? by Speare · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)

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  10. and if Crossover fails... by rope · · Score: 4, Funny

    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."

    and if Crossover fails Jeremy can change wife ;)

  11. Re:How well does Internet Explorer work? by markus · · Score: 4, Informative
    I haven't tested the newest version of CrossOver, yet, so support for IE might have improved by now. As for testing compatibility of web sites, my main problems were that:
    1. IE would not always start under Linux, whereas all the other office programs always worked fine (with a few minor bugs). I never figured out why IE would sometimes just refuse to run.
    2. IE doesn't come with all the neccessary components and I could never work out how to install them afterwards. This means, if your web page requires Asian fonts or non-standard plugins, then there really isn't too much you can do.
    Apart from these restrictions (which might very well be fixed with the new release of CrossOver), I have successfully tested my web pages using IE on Linux.

    I never had the need to run multiple instances of IE at the same time, but you can do so pretty easily under Linux. If I had to do this, I'd probably just use multiple instances of User Mode Linux, because it gives full guaranteed isolation and it is pretty straight forward to set up for this purpose. If you don't quite need this much isolation, then there probably is some way you can make CrossOver run multiple instances of Wine (possibly by using some "chroot()" tricks).

  12. GnuCash DOES have OFX support in cvs now by benoitg · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not perfect, and does need feedback, but it is there. Standard bank and credit card account are supported. Investement accounts will be when LibOFX (http://step.polymtl.ca/~bock/libofx/) matures. As for bill pay, unless banks start giving TRUE OFX access at large, that is still a long way off.

  13. Quicken is Spyware by Pilferer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  14. Instructions to permanently disable by olivermoffat · · Score: 5, Informative