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Intuit Sued Over Product Activation
An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld is reporting: [Scott] Leviant's firm of Stanbury & Fishelman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Intuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of all U.S. purchasers of TurboTax software for the 2002 tax year. The suit alleges that Intuit engaged in unfair and deceptive business practices by failing to fully disclose the mechanisms and consequences of its product-activation technology before consumers pay for the software."
Battling the evil forces of Microsoft Money? Ahh, the good old days when things were black and white.
and this is a surprise. I thought everyone in california sued everyone else. Part of the hollywood suspense.
cheers
It's not that product activation is bad all of the time, it's just that the implementation really sucks on occasion.
;-)
I have no problem with paying for good, reliable, quality software for my home machine, but if you use tricks or traps to sucker people into paying more than they should, that's just not right.
SOFTWARE MAKERS: Don't cry foul about piracy and then turn around and be just as dishonest with consumers.
Well, I guess this is a reason to go back to pirating my games
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Do they exist?
Okay, start taking bets to see if Stanbury and Fishelman will sue Microsoft for their similarly sinister product activation systems.. bet they don't!
I think product registration is a great idea, as it can help you get a better service and allows the company to get info on its users.. but forcing you to activate a product is just a Big Brother attitude.
How would you like it if you had to 'activate' your car every time you moved or made an upgrade to it? Sure, it might help the insurance companies a whole lot, but it's just not right. Ditto for software.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Or is this just a baseless rumour? I haven't found any concrete proof supporting this claim.
In protest, I will evade my taxes this year.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
The good, Intuit gets punished for being stupid.
The bad, the Lawyers are going to win either way.
The ugly... the picture of Scott Gulbransen(an intuit spokesweasel) in the red thong bikini...
Yuck.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
People can argue about the merits of this or that with product activation but the thing that really sucks here is the motivations and the way the law works. This is in effect a company touting for business saying "hey look we think a bunch of people could get cash here" its not that they have any real evidence of actual damage that was caused beyond people being a bit miffed.
What sort of legal system allows Lawyers to start procedings before they have plantiffs ? No other industry works like this, and in fact almost no other countries legal system works like this. This is a sickening example of how law suits can be created just because a lawyer needs a new Ferrari, NOT because there is real evidence of damage.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
And they are not stupid, they are just unable to recieve a good education because they're discriminated by the fascist Canadian government...
The really annoying part about this stuff is that kids who can file with their parents taxes according to the software, but don't have access to the same computer, can't share the software within the family anymore. I suppose this is what the software company is going for. It must be nice to have a monoply.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I already bought taxcut instat of turbotax just because of that.
This is one of the many reasons I've always stuck with Windows when it comes to choosing an operating system for my machines.
;-)
I try not to get all "religious" when it comes to software. Sure, I code for a living, but I realize that these days most programs are good, if not great, quality pieces of software. There are so few programming jobs left that practically everyone still getting paid to code is really, really, _really_ good at it.
Therefore, I just have stuck with Windows rather than BSD, OS X, or Linux. I have Windows Two Thousand, which I must say is 2000 times better than 98 SE was
Anyway, it's time like these that I come to realize it's good that Windows has such a broad, class-spawning user base. We can have class action lawsuits with millions of people because there are so many Windows out there. We have a louder voice, if you will, against any large grievous software companies out there who write backdoor holes and product activation viruses.
I'm not saying it's best for you. In fact, it probably isn't as you all seem to be better coders than me. But deep down I feel Windows is fine for me and I'll keep using it until they go bankrupt or a really, really better product comes along that I have to switch to.
But until then, I'm sorry to say to you that I won't be switching to Linux. Maybe back in 2000 when the markets were hot on Linux, but these days, talking about Linux is like talking about the grandfather who commmitted suicide at the thanksgiving table -- it's just not something you should do.
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Does TaxWiz have the same activation code nonsense? (For those of you who don't know - Intuit bought TaxWiz, (Intuit) QuickTax's only serious competitor in Canada).
We're supposed to PAY for that software? CRAP.
nou sjeg, jij mot 'ns oprotte, kanker-tyfus-tering-Neejderlander
rofl, rotflmao, and hahahahahahaahaaahahaha!!!!!
In 2000, an Intuit rep claimed that they could monitor our website from thousands of locations.
How?
They said they have a backdoor in millions of copies of Quicken. He said they can use those PCs to check the performance of our website.
We went with another vendor, but I have always wondered how it works, the control protocols involved, whether it could be sub-verted, etc.
I'll do anything to get back at those pricks for writing to my boot sector...including the enrichment of lawyers.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
First we push them from their homes, then we sue them for using software when they don't even have computers
God spoke to me
Seamless financial data imports from TurboTax® --Tax Cut
No product activation --Tax Cut
Imports from TurboTax --Tax Cut
is that we shouldn't need to buy a complex software package to figure out how much money the government is going to take out of our hides every year. Pass the Flat Tax and put Intuit and a helluva lot of accountants, lawyers, and lobbyists out of work.
Though that still leaves Microsoft's product activation. Oh, right, I'm running Linux. Never mind.
Intuit knew that hundreds of people would buy their software, then turn around and give it to tons of their friends to do their taxes with it.
They insert an activation key that tries to limit the number of returns the software does, and the number of machines it's installed on. They then botch the installation of said tools and make it very hard to remove/use until they release patch after patch.
Yet, somehow, in these great United States, they now are getting sued for trying to protect the licensing agreement that no one reads and every just clicks 'agree' onto.
What a great country we live in eh?
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
If CDs could not be perfectly copied then Intuit and other firms would not have to resort to this nonsense. They could just insist on using the program with the CD in the drive (like most other consumer software sold). But cheap CD copying - 50 cents or less - makes this scheme useless. I know this may not be politically correct in the Slashdot crowd, but how do you prevent software piracy without resorting to such draconian measures? Must you accept that for every copy of software sold that two will be pirated?
I remember the old days...
.... ahh the old days...
When if a product was well written and did its job, it would sell...
You could put a whole application on a 3.5" disk.
Printed manuals!
When you didn't need copy protection and activation screens. Piracy was more-or-less a marketing tactic more than something that cut into sales (and IMO it still is, but the software publishers don't want the public to know this)
Software companys generated revenue through customer loyalty (as opposed to customer extortion)
One software product had the audacity to recognize that other competing/complimentary products from other publishers did exist, and openly supported import/export functions
When most commercial software wasn't written in Pakastani or Indian programmer-warehouses.
Tech support telephone numbers weren't systemmatically hidden in a maze of FAQs, if at all, and they were 800 numbers.
You could install a software program without worrying if doing so would completely screw up your computer, other programs, or wipe out all your data.
When a "newer version" actually meant more features and functionality.
When the first version of a software package wasn't labelled "6.0"
When software was designed to work with the hardware and RAM you had installed in your machine, and didn't require you to upgrade to next generation crap in order to operate acceptably.
My mother and I used to do peoples' taxes using Turbo Tax. It really increased our productivity, until she started having so many issues with Turbo Tax (it was getting slow primarily). We switched to Tax Act and never looked back (although now I'm no longer helping her since I'm off at college) - I'm glad we switched when we did after I had heard about the copy protection bit a while ago. Why Intuit chose it's methods for protection is beyond me - THINK OF THE BOOT LOADERS!
If your Linux machine has an x86 (Intel, AMD, VIA, etc) processor, Kiplinger TaxCut should work in Wine.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why in the world would you need tax software in Canada? Should be pretty simple up there... just hand over every dollar you make to the govt. God bless socialism! :)
Jeff
Ok slashdotters, I'm asking that you moderate this up for (mostly) selfish reasons.
I went to school with "Scott" Leviant. I don't mean went to school in the "we were in the same campus" sense, I mean it in the we were in the exact same geek cligue sense.
I'm wondering if he reads Slashdot.
So, "Scott", if you are out there...
Only you, me, and WR could answer these two questions...
"Gentle Ben, Gentle Ben, likes _________________"
"It smells right with ____________"
And one only you might know:
What three-letter initials did you use when you set all those high scores on my Atari 800?
What kills me is why the Canadian Government isn't creating their own software to do this, then giving it away free. E-filed returns must save them mega-bucks! The least they could do is let me deduct the cost of the software...
Well, yes, you can deduct the cost of the software from your income.
OK, so suppose Intuit gets slapped down. Still doesn't stop other weasels from writing in the boot track. Does this tool exist:
:-)
1. before install, make a backup of the boot track and checksum it.
2. after install, checksum the boot track, and display diffs, if any.
3. optional restore of the boot track.
This allows us to get our old boot tracks back, and *still* get the fun of starting a righteous flame-war on SlashDot.
Sorry if the answer to this is "yes, you clueless fool, go use tool __". But at least I'll get educated
Well, yes, you can deduct the cost of the software from your income.
Actually, that's not always true.
You can deduct it as software if you are self-employed. If not, you can't deduct it.
Paying an accountant (or HR block) to do your taxes isn't deductible either, unless you're self-employed.
I call good old-fashioned bullshit troll. Diffie-Hellman is a discrete-log public-key agreement algorithm with a signature algorithm (DSA) and encryption algorithm (Elgamal) loosely associated with it. It is not a compression algorithm. Oh, and the journal link is a bit of a giveaway.
wtf -- slashdot clan? Karma warfare! there's a point where the word `sad' just doesnt cut it anymore. I suppose the point of masturbation is where you mod yourself up, but other people in league with you modding you dutifully perhaps you could call yourself (Karma-Prostitutes)Nickname. I dont know... whatever.
This was posted anonymously so as to protect my karma, which as it happens, is excellent, you understand.
D) Stop being a victim of Microsoft; use another system.
First, why are you writing such utter bullshit? Secondly, have you nothing better to do on a saturday evening? no date? figures.
I'm a girl too! See naked chicks in my journal!
A lawsuit that actually makes sense? This can't be...better check the sources...
TurboTax has the Windows(tm) logo flag. So, I take it they pass the "Designed for Windows" logo criteria.
How in heaven's name could anything that writes the boot track earn the Windows logo? This cranky old software validation manager smells either cluelessness (MSFT) or cheating (Intuit) or some combination of the above.
(On the other hand, maybe they're scared I'm going to do something like drop to shell and type 'dd if=/dev/cdrom of=turbotax.iso' :P )
Lagito ergo expectabo
If by "every loonie" you mean at most 35%, then you are bang on.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Not quite a monopoly -- my previous post.
What do you mean you "don't have a congressman"? Just pick one out! We got 20 million mexicans who can vote, get a drivers license, get free medical care, bring over their entire familes, open bank accounts and now even get social security-all of whom are not "legal" immigrants. No idea how many legal, that is OK as far as I am concerned, but the other 20 million do exist, and what I said is true, they do all that stuff and no one says boo to them--so-- don't let being a canadian get in your way, the US is wide open! Have fun! Pick "your" congress weasel out and let him have it with your opinion!
%^)
You have to phone in to get a new activation key for each time you install Quicken XG. What is worse is that your license to use online banking or update is only good for 1 year and then you have to pay a fee to renew your subscription. If I had known that I would not have upgraded from Quicken 2002.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Although it was itself planning to use product activation next year, Block is now making anti-product activation the centerpiece of its marketing campaign for the remainder of the tax season
I love it...
~SL
Yep, I bought taxwiz to avoid quicktax and found out that it had activation software now too. Of course, it wasn't till after I found out why, and won't be using them either next year.
Talk about deceptive, nowhere does Taxwiz mention the change or the fact that it was bought out by Intuit, and their website still says "your 100% canadian tax solution"...
1 - its none of their damned business that I bought their software. They have my $$, that is all the info they need.
2 - I bought it, I shouldn't have to ask their permission to use it..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The article mentions that the lawyer in question (Scott Leviant) ran into the problem when his laptop screen crapped out and found he couldn't install TurboTax onto another computer. The article also mentions he is also interested in hearing about any of your own problems with TurboTax this year. Here is the address:
hsleviant@stanfish.com
I'm sure he would be interested to hear about the folks who, after installing TurboTax, had problems with dual-booting and older computers where the large-disk translation got corrupted.
Yeah, I say we pack up that Statute of Liberty and send it back. It's not like it means anything lately anyway, thanks to dumbasses like you.
you don't know what you're talking about
I'm German
Bending over backward for Intuit does seem appropariate, given how much they've had their customers bending over forward.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Since Intuit tax software uses the horrible product activation, where can I find some free tax software. Is there a GNU project for tax software? If not, we need one.
The standard version only sets you back, on average, $30. I'm unsure as to where the $79 figure comes from unless you're using the Incorporated Business version.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Why aren't they suing Intuit for QuickBooks, which requires an expensive subscription in order to continue to generate payroll checks after the first year?
Someone hand Intuit the K-Y Jelly and set up the webcam, its time to watch these guys get the screwing they so rightly deserve. My stepdad uses Turbotax on his aged PC, and when it crashed, and crashed hard, during the middle of the process, he ran into this problem. He tried to get everything straightened out, and when they told him of the fee, this man, who never cusses, used words I shall not repeat here. So he got the joy of spending six hours doing it by hand instead. I'm gonna call him and tell him about this right after this post.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
No they haven't. Companies are still using crappy copy-protection schemes that don't work on many computers. Neverwinter Nights, for example, had to be patched to remove the SecureROM software that prevented many customers from running the game. Some were using the "illegal" no-CD crack on their purchased copies.
I installed TurboTax onto a clean Win2000 guest OS in VMWare. The only boot sector the activation routines got to touch was the one on the virtual drive. Oh, and after I installed TT (but before using it), I made a copy of the Win2000 guest OS file.
So if I wanted, hypothetically, I could copy that VMWare file to any other machine and run it from there.
I don't have any intention of copying or sharing the software. But it pisses me off that a) I had to take these measures to ensure the safety and stability of my real OS installation, and b) for all the possible danger to my machine if I'd installed it the normal way, it was trivial to circumvent.
Good move guys.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
...TaxACT. It is available in a number of different versions, and carries a guarantee that if you are charged penalties or too much tax as a result of a TaACT error, the company will refund everything. They claim that it is the only software with this guarantee.
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Maybe they should sue users dumb enough to buy the product after hearing about this activation scheme. In case you haven't been paying attention, the activation prevents you from printing old returns if you change your computer hardware. You're supposed to keep old returns for 7 years and NO ONE keeps the same computer configuration for that long. Therefore, electronic copies of your returns become unprintable (therefore unusable)... not my idea of smart.
I was going to buy it, but didn't because I heard about the boot sector nonsense.
*I used to be quite irreverent and ignorant. I am probably much smarter now. I seem to realize this every 45 days or so.
Yeah, TaxWiz (which is what I bought this year instead of QuickTax) *does* have activation, but I don't think it's as intrusive as QuickTax's. It doesn't modify any bootsectors or install C-Dilla; it connects to the net and downloads the file "TW_IM32.dll" ( 30k).
... but it would definitely bother me if they changed that in the future.)
Although I haven't tried it, if you've made a [legal] backup of this DLL, you'd probably be able to use it to recover a Taxwiz installation (without having to send the authentication code online). It's useful to keep in mind in the event of a disaster (not an unlikely phenomenon in Windows).
That said, I found TaxWiz activation to be pretty painless. The program sent my activation #, it downloaded the aforementioned DLL, and my app is now unlocked. (It wasn't as intrusive as other Intuit software I've read about
...the bastards get ya coming and going, don't they?
Pay for superfluous Windows licenses, or pay more for the privilege of using your pre-existing licenses. What a great choice!
~Philly
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." --Norman Schwartzkopf
It was Donald Rumsfeld who said that
I did the online thing (turbotax.com). They do a good job - I won't buy their local version, but I'm happy to support their online version.
Making a kickstart install is a brease and there are no arbitrary hoops to jump through.
Being a sysadmin is hard enough. We don't need MS intentionally making it harder.
When you can buy a computer for $150 that does everything you need it to, what will Microsoft do to convince you to give them money?
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
The whole time I've had anything to do with Intuit's products, they have been trying to nickel and dime me to death. I guess I'm smarter than the average Quicken user and anyway it pissed me off enough that I wasn't willing to give in.
Let me count the ways.
With the online banking available for Quicken and Quickbooks, there is a monthly fee. Web banking at all three of the banks I've used since the web has been around has been free.
Quicken comes with tax tables that it will use to calculate payroll withholding, but the tax tables expire after a few months. To get updates to the tax tables, you have to pay for a subscription.
But the information in the tax tables is made available for free by the IRS and each state tax agency, and in fact is printed and mailed to business owners each year at taxpayer expense.
Yet there is no facility for manually entering the tax tables or importing tax table files that could reasonably be downloaded for free off the net.
My business has only one employee (myself) so what I do is work out my withholding in a spreadsheet. I've found that doing the calculation this way helps me understand my taxes better when I'm deciding what to pay myself each time. Fortunately QuickBooks allows me to enter the withholding manually - I wouldn't be suprise if they remove that in the future.
They're constantly trying to sell you preprinted checks and invoice forms. You should be able to print nice invoices from QuickBooks on an inkjet printer without using preprinted forms, but there is no facility for designing the invoices. So what I usually do is type up an invoice and email it to my clients; if they want a hardcopy I use a wordprocessor. That works out for me because I don't invoice clients very frequently - it wouldn't work for a retail store.
If you reinstall Quickbooks after reinstalling your OS or move it to a new machine, you have to reactivate the product. My copy of Quickbooks doesn't have the horrible activation scheme this article is about, but what is a pain is that after activating it a couple times, you're told that the product is in use and it won't reactivate. You have to call tech support to get a code to reactivate it.
Fortunately I now have this code written down so I can reactivate it myself. But you know, I paid for the product, I should be able to use it without registering it. They have my damn money.
The last straw for me was that earlier this year, Intuit canceled support for QuickBooks 99's online banking. I got spammed with upgrade notices every time I logged on before this happened. After it happened I canceled my online banking and now I just use the web banking.
I have come to the conclusion that online banking like Quicken and Quickbooks have is just not that good an idea. The whole time I've used both products I have had trouble with my accounts not balancing right. Now that I reconcile my accounts manually with my bank statements, and so am much more careful about it than the supposedly convenient online banking, I have been able to get my books to balance exactly.
I used TurboTax a couple times. I didn't like it the first time I used it, but I used it a second year because I was out of the country and wanted to file online.
First, I think it's pretty damn useless. To handle the schedule C, business income, it asks such meaningful questions as "enter your business expenses" - but you have to figure that out yourself without using turbotax. It's just as easy to enter it on a paper form.
Last year my taxes were much more complicated because I now own a house and so am itemizing deductions, but I found that while doing my taxes by hand, without using software, I was able to claim a deduction that saved significant money. Turbotax would never have found that deduction.
(What I did was have my corporation pay rent to me personally for rental of my home office. But I would have to pay taxes on the rental income. What I was able to do was to depreciate the portion of my home used for business purposes. The maximum depreciation allowed was the business income on the property - which was the total amount of the rent. So I was able to pay myself the home office rental tax-free, I won't have to pay taxes on the rent for decades. The IRS had no complaint about this. Turbotax wouldn't have been able to deal with it.)
I just plain feel that it's wrong for a software publisher to require me to activate a product before I can use it, and so I will never knowingly purchase a software product that requires it. That means I'm never going to install Windows XP. Also I'm never going to install service pack 3 on my Win2k box, because of the EULA.
Finally, I'd like to suggest that if any of you work for companies that have staff attorneys, that you suggest to the attorneys that they require attorney approval of EULAs before any software gets installed. If enough companies start doing that, the current nonsense that passes for a license agreement will get set straight pretty quick - imagine if General Motors wasn't willing to use Windows because their staff attorneys objected to the license agreement!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The problem is, your "good old days" never existed.
When if a product was well written and did its job, it would sell...
TurboTax has no trouble selling millions of copies, activation or no. Tax software is naturally susceptible to casual copying - lending discs to family and friends. Intuit felt they needed a way to combat this. Not defending them, I switched from TurboTax to TaxCut this year specifically because of the activation software.
When you didn't need copy protection and activation screens.
You're kidding, right? Copy protection is a failed experiment, a throwback to your good old days of computing. Back then, copy protection was much worse than it is now. There was software that wrote data onto the install media so you could only install it in one place at a time. Even Lotus 1-2-3 locked its executable to a specific area of your hard drive to prevent copying to a different computer. Defrag your drive, and forget about using your spreadsheets.
Software companys generated revenue through customer loyalty (as opposed to customer extortion)
You have obviously completely forgotten the word processor wars of the early to mid 80s. Dozens of different file formats, unreadable by competing products.
You could install a software program without worrying if doing so would completely screw up your computer, other programs, or wipe out all your data.
See above. Lots of old software did very nasty things in the name of copy protection.
Maybe Intuit need a product called ion, then their users would be able to make better decisions about buying their software :)
;)
(for the slow people, Intuit ion)
By messing with its customers, Intuit is heavily marketing the competitor's product, TaxCut.
I know for a FACT, they have used (& probably still use) TIMEBOMBS. I had two computers with quicken installed, it was no coincidence, that both stopped working correctely on the SAME DAY!
Gnucash is better anyway(and GPL_FREE), as it uses double entry accounting
A couple weeks ago I was shopping at my local grocery superstore and picked up a copy of TurboTax Basic from a display next to the service counter. I usually have one of those *block services prepare my taxes, and it usually costs $75 or more in fees. I really didn't put much thought into buying TurboTax. An hour later I fired up the Windows2000Pro laptop I have an slipped in the CD. The next 3 hours was an amazing lack of progress at getting the thing installed, and 3 support sessions with the company involving uncounted people on their end and a fun phone bill for me.
The cause of my problems are the partition scheme of my laptop. The Windows2000Pro system C: partition is 900MB, just big enough for the OS and some temp files. The swapfile is on another larger partition, as are all third-party applications.
The "Minimum System Requirements" on the box (a DVD-style clamshell) are easy to read through the shrinkwrap. To summarize the relevant parts, the OS list included Windows2000, the hard disk space specified 65MB and an additional 60MB if IE was not installed. IE 5.5 or higher was listed as being required to access online features, obtain product updates, and complete electronic filing. I read this before buying, and noted that my system meets all the requirements given on the box.
On insertion, the CD autorun process kicked up a splash window, then an animated install menu window. I clicked the obvious choice to register and install, followed the prompts through selecting my type of network connection, filling out the registration info and getting to a window with a single button to "Install." Clicking the install button got me a window where the file copying process is obviously supposed to happen, but instead I get a standard alery window that informs me that there is insufficient space on the hard disk to install.
Some notable things at this point: I have never been presented a EULA of any type. None of the windows I have progressed through have displayed a EULA, nor has there been any possible sequence of buttons that makes one appear. There is no EULA in the printed material inside the box. I have also not entered the CD key code anywhere in the process. There is no prompt for it anywhere up to this point, not even in the registration window where I entered my name/address/email type info. This becomes interesting in another hour or so when I'm on the phone with their support staff.
I'm now at the point where the TurboTax installer will not proceed further because I do not have 191MB available on drive C:. I want to install on drive E: which has plenty of space, so I consulted the FAQ on the turbotaxsupport.com website. I didn't find anything applicable, so decided to consult a support staffer about the best way to make this happen. (They use a webchat interface to provice frontline support.) The live person on the other end directed me to the web FAQ with a set of steps for installing from hard disk instead of CD, involving simply copying the CD installer files to the HD. Doubtful, I tried it anyway, and was not surprised when the installer still stubbornly insisted that there was not enough space because it was only scanning the C: drive. I still had the webchat window open, which gave me an option to select that I was unsatisfied with the help I was given and offered me a chance to talk with a "senior" support staffer via webchat. I muttered "hell yes" and was shortly explaining the problem all over again to a new person. I was walked 4 times through the complete process, echoing the window headings and options at each step laboriously. None of the suggestions made were helpful, and few even made any sense at all. At one point I was even told that the only solution would be to uninstall and then reinstall. I reminded him politely that getting the product installed in the first place was the whole point of this exercise, and asked how I could possibly uninstall when nothing has been installed even once yet. I was then treated like a fencepost and told to find the TurboTax menu under Program Files from the Start menu, at which point I seriously wondered what problem the support staffer thought we were trying to fix. (Of course there was no entry under the start menu.) Finally after convincing him that the product was in fact not installed at all, not even a little bit, and could not be uninstalled, he gave up and provided me with a voice toll number and PIN. I asked for a toll free number but was told none exists. Ouch, since I was envisioning a lengthy call if my experience so far proved typical. I decided to take this as far as it goes.
I had no problems getting to a live person quickly. He seemed to understand the nature of the problem and over the course of the next hour I had a pretty dizzy ride as I was asked the same questions repeatedly and he was consulting with an increasing number of people on his end. I had some pointed questions about the minimum requirements listed on the box, such as why the installer wanted 191MB in the first place, since the requirements plainly state 65MB. I was told that the higher amount was due to not having IE 6.0 installed. I pointed out that the IE requirement on the box stated 5.5 or higher, not that 6.0 was needed. I was told that was true, but if 6.0 is not present the installer will install it. I pointed out that the box said that only 60MB more was needed for IE if it was not present, which means a total of 125MB minimum requirement and asked why 66MB more than that was needed. I didn't get an answer to that. I asked him to confirm that IE 6.0 was required, contrary to what the box said. I was told that IE 6.0 is needed, but he stopped short of giving me an actual confirmation that the box was wrong. I asked him to confirm that the requirements on the box were wrong specifically regarding HD space and IE version, and he went on hold for a while. When he came back he asked me if I read the EULA, as all these facts were in the EULA. I told him I hadn't read the EULA and asked where I could find it, at the same time pointing out that it was irrelevant since I had no way to read system requirements prior to purchase other than on the outside of the box. He told me I must have seen the EULA, it was on the third window of the install process. I told him I didn't remember clicking past it, and by now I had gone through these steps many times. I did it again for him, step by step, this time saying "no EULA" after describing every window. When we got all the way to the diskspace alert, there had been no EULA presented. I pointed out that anything in the EULA couldn't possibly apply to me since it never made an appearance. He never mentioned the EULA again.
At one point or another in the phone conversation I was told the following things, all of which turned out to be false:
That I wasn't being presented all the installer windows because I didn't have IE 6.0 installed.
That the EULA was presented on the third window and before the registration form.
That it was possible to install my E: drive regardless of available space on C:
The end result seemed to be that the installer scans the C: drive before offering an option to specify the location for installation, which they agreed was stupid. They insisted that after that space check there is a prompt that allows changing the installation location, but you can't get there if you don't have enough space for the entire installation on the C: drive. They also changed their minds about how the IE installer worked, and said that it offers a choice to not upgrade to IE 6.0, but obviously not before the space check. I have my doubts, since the disk space alert pops up at the beginning of the file copy process, with the progress bar ready to start counting files. I'm not sure where they are fitting in the choices for install location and options, but it sure doesn't seem to be before the initial file copy. This implies to me that it always needs 191MB on the C: drive to install, no matter what the environment is, which is still 66MB more than the requirements stated on the box. I hope it's not so, but I doubt I'll ever see for myself. I'm not repartitioning my system to accomodate a single proprietary tax program.
I know my experience surely isn't typical. Most people have 200MB or more free on their C: drive. I just don't have the extra space to waste on my laptop for a Windows system partition, and this shouldn't be about how I partition my machine. There were several humorous points for me in the conversations, I think the funniest was when I was told by one of their "experts" to relabel my drives to swap E: and C: just for the install and then switch them back. I had to keep from laughing as I explained that I couldn't change the letter of a running system boot partition, and even if I could the system likely would die immediately and certainly wouldn't be bootable in that condition. Another funny one was the idea that "minimum system requirements" meant only those needed to run the application, but not to install it. Their argument was that the installer temporarily needs more than the minimum requirements during installation, but that the program would run fine with the listed requirements. I believe that is an unreasonable position.
I was given an address to return the product for a refund and cut loose. I came away with several concerns, especially surrounding the EULA (or apparent lack of one) and the listed minimum system requirements, which are misleading at best and untruthful at worst. It's bad enough that a product requires you to buy it before you can read the EULA, and we're used to that. But for the CD-based installer to require you to register the product before you can even install it, and doesn't even show you the EULA until after it copies the product to your hard disk is pretty bad in my opinion. Perhaps I should count myself fortunate that I never got far enough to see the EULA.
Actually, the Peoples of the North are of different groups, with Inu, Inuit and Cree just being three that I know of offhand. I am sure the Native Affairs Canada website would have more info.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Or a slow reader- I did a schedule C, Schedule A and long form 1040 in damn near the time I spent reading this thread.
Oh, yeah, Screw product activation, or ANY security device. I WILL NOT buy any software that requires dongel, activation or registration; they are all evil.
But then I wish the first person to think of the very CONCEPT of password had been strangled as an example.....
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
I bought TurboTax and installed it. About a month later, I bought a bigger hard drive and used Drive Image to copy the contents of my old drive onto the new drive. Now when I try to boot into XP on the new drive, it just hangs. Fucking activation scheme is fucking up my new drive!
I used Drive Image to restore a backup of my XP partition (I created the backup way before I installed TurboShit) and I can boot into that copy of XP with no problems. Now I have to fucking wait until I'm done with my taxes before I can switch over to the new drive.
Here Here. I am really peaved about that spyware program they loaded onto my machine. I actually had my program suddently become 'non-activated'...luckily it was AFTER I had filed my taxes. Otherwise they think they rightfully could bill me another 30 bucks. Jackasses. As if they don't have a constant revenue stream...why can't they just make due with their current income each year?
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
As you may or may not know, the IRS was going to allow people who made lass than a certain amount of money in 2002 file for free on their website. Intuit complained, citing that they would take a monetary hit because of the loss of people who would otherwise use their software.
So, an agreement of sorts was made: The IRS wouldn't have e-file on their website, but Intuit had to allow people who made less than $27,000 to file for free (see taxfreedom.com). So Intuit did this.
However, here comes the catch: In order to continue your return without paying, you have to click on a small link back at the taxfreedom website. Instead, when people return to turbotax.com, you are greeted with the "Continue your return" link. And guess what? the second you log back in to check the status of your return, you are billed for $30+!
Granted, Intuit does post a small piece of text on taxfreedom.com that states you must continue from this page, but how many people have actually done this? I feel like a fool for falling for Intuit's deception, so I won't be using their product anymore.
It's just so sad that a company has to stoop to such low levels to make a profit these days.
"This food is problematic."
Contrary to popular belief, we Canadians are undertaxed.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
It's been pointed out elsewhere in this discussion that the product activation will fail if you reconfigure your computer. That would prevent you from producing a hardcopy later on. I think its unreasonable to expect that no one's going to reconfigure their computer in the time that you're required to keep your records, and so I assert that Intuit is marketing a product that violates IRS regulations.
I think the computer records rule may only apply to businesses, but that would mean that it would apply to non-corporate business owners who file a schedule C with their personal return.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
via email and the postal service. email was to their public affairs flacks (the only non "support" address I found on their site at: public_relations@intuit.com), snail mail to:
r m=1&DocID=836
Tom Allanson
Senior Vice President
Consumer Tax Group, Intuit Inc.
2632 Marine Way
Mountain View, CA 94043
6 weeks and counting, and no response on the snail mail side. I did get an email response from a member of the Turbo Tax "Executive Response Team" (myra_support@intuit.com). This obvious boilerplate reminded me what a good idea --and how utterly benign-- the product activation was. I used to spend 3 days doing taxes....software has reduced that to about an hour. But it won't be done with TT any more.
Their response is followed by my letter. I hereby place them both in the public domain:-)
From Intuit:
My name is Myra and I am a member of the Executive Response Team for TurboTax. I am sorry to learn that you have some concerns about our products and want to thank you for taking time to contact us directly about it. Hearing directly from customers like you is the best way for us to know exactly what you're experiencing so we can work together to get you correct information and the best solution. I'd also like to apologize for the delay in responding to you.
After reading your message, please let me share some quick facts with you that I believe will give you the information you need.
TurboTax 2002 includes a product activation process that ensures TurboTax is used in accordance with the TurboTax software license and services agreement.
Product activation ties printing and filing from the TurboTax federal product to a single computer, preventing unlicensed use of the product.
Privacy was a key consideration when implementing the Product Activation technology in TurboTax. Product activation is completely anonymous -- no personal information is transmitted to Intuit. We would never violate your trust or privacy by installing any type of third party software such as spyware.
Product activation transfers nothing but a Product Key and Request Code. The Key and Code key are matched together and a confirmation is sent from Intuit that activates TurboTax on your computer.
Product activation does not monitor any activities on your computer nor will it prevent you from using your CD-R or CD-RW drives.
The functionality that manages the TurboTax product activation (Macrovision SafeCast(r)) can be deleted from your computer when you are done using TurboTax. The uninstall utility is available on our support site at http://www.turbotaxsupport.com/default.asp?platfo
Once again, we are sorry we caused you concern. Your opinion matters to us and we will improve the process for next year taking your input into account. Thank you for your comments. If there is anything I can do to keep you as a TurboTax customer, please let me know. I hope this helps. If I can address any additional concerns please e-mail me at Myra_Support@intuit.com, or you can visit our website at www.turbotaxsupport.com.
Best regards,
Myra
Executive Response Team
Intuit, Inc.
Myra_Support@intuit.com
My letter:
I have been a satisfied user of Intuit's TurboTax for ten years, and purchased a deluxe version with downloadable state tax packages directly from Intuit annually since 1997. Regrettably, unless Intuit revisits its approach towards the honesty of its customers next year, the 2002 version may represent my final purchase of TurboTax.
. The product activation requirement and limitation to use of the 2002 TurboTax product on a single PC makes an unpleasant statement about Intuit's perception of the typical behaviors of its customers, and is unrealistic as more homes move to a networked, multiple PC computing environment. In the last year, my home network grew to three computers sharing two printers on a wireless LAN. It is quite simply unacceptable that I am limited to using TurboTax at just one of these machines. As a 20-year information technology professional, I am sensitive to --and share-- your legitimate concerns over intellectual property and related digital rights. Moreover, as a multi-year repeat customer, I am offended by Intuit's negative assumptions about my honesty.
Equally disturbing was the fact that TurboTax --unknown to me at the time of installation-- placed the hidden "C-Dilla"folder and its associated "SafeCast"file on my PC. I have read Intuit's FAQ on these files, and it's not yet clear to me exactly how "SafeCast"serves me as an honest consumer in any way. I am appalled that I was not notified or given any options about this code during installation.
I am sure you are aware that H&R Block's "Tax Cut"is not only priced below TurboTax, has no activation requirement, and is sold under an family license explicitly permitting installation on multiple computers. As my family prepares now for the 2003 tax season, I hope you'll appreciate why TurboTax has lost much of its appeal in our household. My plans for any future purchases of TurboTax hinge directly on how Intuit intends to approach its customers in 2003. I look forward to hearing from your on your plans for next year's version of TurboTax.
Use TurboTax for the Web. What dumbass would buy software to install on their computer for a one time use like TurboTax.
A guy at my work bought TurboTax and make 10 copies and gave it to everyone at work. Duh of course Intuit is going to setup some anti-piracy stuff.
I say again, you are an idiot if you don't do it online.
Then you need to get this Excel spreadsheet for Free Ontario Tax spreadsheet. Once done with the spreadsheet, print out a copy for yourself and then use TELEFILE to file for free.
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
I stopped using Quicken in late '99, when the copy of quicken I'd been using turned out not to be y2k compliant, and intuit would do nothing about it but offer an upgrade. I cross upgraded instead. But the MS alternative is flawed in different ways.
Activation sucks badly. Actually, I just installed groove this week, and I forgive their activation as
(a) you can install groove on up to 5 of your own machines; just export your account and import it on the others
(b) on their web site you can manage activations for everyone on the team you bought copies for -deactivate existing installations, see all your keys listed and so stay in control.
Finally, because groove works by logging in to their servers (and consuming lots of their bandwith), the logon and authentication process is legit.
--dang hell YA! You GOT it. Sad to see HONEST LEGAL immigrants getting the complete BS from our drone bloatedcrats while the illegals are rewarded daily.
I wish you well, I am glad you finally got it straightened out. Hang tough!
Tell ya a story from my girlfriend. She gets a divorce before I met her, but never changed her name back, so one day she goes to do it. Buncha calls later she's down at the SSN office trying to get a new card, she got STACKS of ID, proof of this, proof of that, bills, insurance papers, the whole regular american deal, including our state DL of course. We are the only two anglos in the room. About two dozen or so hispanics. I saw the "ID" these guys were using to get SSN's, didn't even have a picture on it! Just printed up pieces of paper with some weird stamp on it, and they were going through the line fast as the clerks could handle it. One of them was the translator, it was like he had a tour group almost. I mean, we are sitting right there watching this go down.
Comes my girlfriends turn in line, NOPE, not enough "proof" to get it that day, had to go get some more. We are both steamed and incredulous, but what can ya do. So, before we leave, I asked the lady "WHAT is up with handing out all the cards to these guys? Can't you see you are being scammed?" I'm paraphrasing but I asked her that. So, she leans over to me across the counter, older white lady, whispers "we got ordered to do it that way, we don't like it either". No lie, she told me that.
That was in an office in norcross georgia, a burb northeast of atlanta, about 4.5 years ago.
After installing TurboTax, windows cound no longer access the main harddrive (stop error at startup said "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE", took 2 days to fix.
Cantax sold their $30 product mailing list the summer after I left the company to... Intuit! You know - the QuickTax people. CCH Canadian bought the rest from TLC when they sold out to the Mattel Toy Company. I guess they thought that 'division of Mattel Toy' wouldn't look good on the box. We thought 'Taxes with Barbie' would be a hit, but the proposal was voted down.
You can still download their 'small business' demo and calculate your tax - you just can't print or save to disk till you buy and get the unlock code. If you're just doing one or two returns, it's too expensive. If you're doing 10, ask your relatives to chip in. No activation, one unlock code fits all.
If you're a Canadian and paying taxes, well... yes you have been screwed. But we have free, world-class health care if you live long enough to get to the front of the line.
If your return is a basic T4 slip, an RRSP, and a few donations, download something like Cantax to check your addition if you don't have a printing calculator. If you've got something nasty complicated, stick to what you know and see an accountant. If you don't know what you're doing, you can screw yourself out of hundreds, thousands, or even more - whether or not your software is crap.
CCRA will add up the numbers for you at no extra charge, but they don't have to give you any deductions you don't ask for.
Yes, they will.
As I understand it, all you have to do is say that you can't comprehend the forms and calculations, and make your mark on a letter to that effect.
The other side of that coin is that they aren't required to find you every deduction you might be eligible for, so you may end up saving $50 at the Block, but spending $500 extra in taxes. Your call...
Ok, I'm late to the game, so I don't expect to be modded or read, but, why sue? WHY SUE?
Vote with your wallets/pocketbooks... just don't buy the damned product. If all the software companies implement something similar, spend the $55 on a tax preparing human being.
Note0: I AM A LAW STUDENT, and I think this suing crap is out of hand.
Note1: I am a former software developer who got into law to protect the interests of software developers with respect to the ownership of the work they do, so don't hate me.
Every time you buy a DVD, computer software, or certain audio CDs you're being punished by anti-piracy measures. This is America, why do software companies, the RIAA, and the movie industry automatically assume everyone is guilty? That makes me WANT to pirate just to spite them.
If these paranoid companies would make a good product they would most likely sell lots of them. Keep screwing around with the customers and you'll see your sales fall (and then blame it on piracy no doubt.) >:(
I think overtime GNUcash will become the ultimate accounting tool. I can see it really taking off big.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This kind of crap makes me feel good about giving my CPA $250.00 and a pile of papers every march..
-ted
Here my issue with tax software - I would do stuff by hand, I don't mind at all - the only reason I really use tax software is not so much any time savings (I think the savings is rather small overall) but instead that it lets me eFile.
Does anyone remember form 1040PC? It was a fantastic form that provided a sort of compressed-text summary of your whole tax form on one sheet of paper, that was easy for the IRS to parse and was free to mail in, resulting in almost as quick a return as eFiling.
What I want is a return of something as simple as the 1040PC, that would let me either mail or email a condensed version of my whole return.
I believe the IRS was taking comments on a public eFiling system, but the comment period is closed now - there were a lot of comments from the tax preparers forecasting doom if the IRS let just ANYONE eFile without a fee, but there were some good letters of support. Just in case it makes any difference, please everyone write to the IRS and make a case for letting people eFile on their own, which should teach the idiot tax preparation industry a thing or two about treating customers like dirt and taking advantage of the whole US.
A good place to start contacting the IRS would appear to be here, at the Taxpayer Advocate Service.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> implementation really sucks on occasion
Yeah, if they want to be so draconian about it why not just put one hardware dongle in the box? Sadly, I know why, because trashing your hard drive is much cheaper than a 20 cent bit of plastic and an 80 cent chip.
Hopefully this class action will change the economics around a bit. It should be more expensive to ruin my system than to include a hardware dongle.
I sent my friend, a software engineer at Intuit, the URL of this discussion, as well as some links to individual comments that had particularly important points to make. I suggested that my friend forward them to others in the company who could benefit from understanding how Intuit was not serving its users needs.
In doing so, I hoped to help save Intuit's ass. I'm sure there are a few people at Intuit reading this discussion, but probably most people there are unaware of it, and much as most Microsoft employees feel the monopoly lawsuit was unjust, I'm sure that most Intuit employees feel that the class action lawsuit is just persecution and has nothing to do with anything that Intuit might actually have done wrong.
My friend responded to thank me but also to tell me that his previous attempts to give constructive criticism to others at Intuit had not only fallen on deaf ears, but had actively provoked an angry backlash.
I had actually suggested he get a hotmail account so he could forward the Slashdot discussion URL anonymously, and he said he wouldn't do even that. Not that he didn't feel they needed to hear this, but he felt very strongly that trying to get them to understand wouldn't result in anything positive happening.
Also, my friend told me that on his own initiative he had attempted to get features changed that he felt were just stupid and really unhelpful to users. These suggestions were not in any way appreciated by his coworkers at Intuit.
Unwillingness to listen to what your customers are saying about your products is a very unhealthy attitude for any company to have. It's just this kind of attitude that resulted in Japan eating Detroit's lunch after the '73 oil embargo. There are many other examples of companies sufferring losses or even going out of business because of this kind of arrogance.
GnuCash is already good enough that anyone who can run it should be using it instead of Quicken. If it were ported to Windows, it would devastate Intuit. I know it runs on OS X under X11. It would need to run as a native application on Mac and Windows, without using X11, to have this effect - but note that GTK has already been ported to Win32, and I believe a Mac port is underway.
It's going to take a lot of time and work before business owners can use GnuCash instead of Quickbooks, but when that time comes, Intuit's going to be in about the situation with respect to personal finance as SCO is in relation to IBM PC operating systems today. (SCO once bragged about being the largest UNIX vendor in terms of unit sales.)
I'm sure there are many hard working and well-meaning people employed by Intuit, but they do not appear to be in a position of power within the company. Unless the people who make decisions at Intuit get a serious clue, in a couple of years there's just going to be a smoking crater where Intuit's offices used to be.
When is your government actually going to get around to proper electronic tax filing?
Witness the Australian Tax Office and their (imaginatively named) "E-Tax". For the 2001 fiscal year, over 520,000 people used it. To put it in perspective, that's a quarter of the Australian working population that has a computer is using etax. My refund was electronically deposited into my account in 6 working days, and it was just me and the Tax office, with no other pain-in-the-ass company in the middle.
I know, it probably won't help those with complex finances, but it sure as hell would put a bullet into companies like these.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
They are just not familiar with the complicated rules in the modern world of business..
Dude, they live in igloos!!
"I don't know why people are surprised that France won't help us get Saddam out of Iraq. After all, France wouldn't help us get the Germans out of France!" --Jay Leno
"The last time the French asked for 'more proof' it came marching into Paris under a German flag." --David Letterman
I didn't realise that Saddam had massed troops ont he border of the U.S and was planning an invasion. Why havn't we been told about this terrible and direct threat to the U.S?
Oh, wait, yeah...
Now I'm tired of this....
Please Read This to see what YOU Americans owe France for their help in YOUR war of independence
That's right, if it wasn't for the glorious French, you'd still all be UK subjects over the pond.
I don't think I'm very happy. I always fall asleep to the sound of my own screams.
I wrote 2 nasty grams ... (even this was difficult as the turbox form errored. There was a "If you are having problems go here" generic form link; however, it must have been designed by the the brainiacs-r-us dept because it sent me back to the broken form when I told it I was writing about Turbo Tax).
Annoy beyond belief I called sales and told them I wanted my money back. He said, OK send back the CD. I said, No way. You sent it to me unsolicited and I am NOT paying a cent to get it back to you. He put me on hold for a short eternity and camed back saying I was all set. Refund came thru a few days later.
I downloaded TaxCut and am very happy with it. Intuit are on my shit list permanently.
I have switched
from MYOB because of limited support,
from QuickBooks because of expensive support,
from Simply because it is just awful
and my current software also sucks.
I stopped using Quicken in late '99, when the copy of quicken I'd been using turned out not to be y2k compliant, and intuit would do nothing about it but offer an upgrade.
What the heck else were they supposed to do? Wave their magic wand and make your installation y2k compliant? What exactly did you want?
Umm, unfortunately, software has long been considered merely a service, rather than a product. Read the license agreements/EULAs with any program you pay for!
They make it pretty clear you paid for a license to run said product, and *not* for the product itself. A copy of the code is included on the enclosed media, basically, for your convenience, to get it installed on your system under the printed licensing terms.
I believe this stems back to the days when software was first developed for mainframes. People didn't just go to the store and pick something up for one of those puppies. They called IBM (or someone similar) and said "We need software that accomplishes task X or Y. Can we pay you for the service of having a few coders develop that for us?"
In other words, providing software was a service.
Of course, with mass acceptance of PCs and home computers - everything's mass produced and pre-packaged. That makes everyone feel like they just "bought the program" when they take home a retail boxed copy. Nonetheless, you're still just paying for rights to use the code in whatever way the seller designates in the terms of the contract/license agreement.
Kinda sucks though, doesn't it?
How would you like it if you had to 'activate' your car every time you moved or made an upgrade to it?
Not much. I'd like it even less if I had one of those burglar alarm systems that shut themselves down if you don't pay for a new maintenance contract within 30 days of it telling you the old one is running out.
Tax software is a money maker because it has to be updated each year to account for changes in the tax code. GNUcash could be equipped with general functions useful for tax preparation but that will be about as useful as the DOOM engine without a wadfile. Somebody will have to provide a supported debugged module that is correct for the tax year in a timely fashion. Open Source/Free will not work for this. OS/Free applications grow like stalagtites and acquire features and maturity over time. These tax modules have to be complete and relatively debugged each and every year.
I think it would be a good idea for GNUcash to facilitate tax modules with a sane framework. But if someone steps up to the plate with a "GNUcash tax module" its going to be a pay service. If the GNUcash people do it right, that module can function as a configfile and not as software. That way, they needn't get they're knickers in a bunch since a reasonable module WILL have a restrictive license. I suppose it would be even more practical if GNUcash could talk to an online server that uses GNUcash data to figure the taxes. The data could be returned to GNUcash which can use OS/Free functionality to actually print the return. No matter how you do it, your taxes won't be entirely figured by something you download from SourceForge.
Intuit seems to have bought in to a Microsoft-like attitude towards its software users. They seem to have adopted the attitude that all their users are thieves - that given the chance, they will steal the software.
This attitude was prevalent in the 1980's. The inconvenience and loss of productivity associated with copy protection schemes led me to eliminate those products from consideration when recommending and specifying software purchases. Products with copy protection features were simply not an option. Today my response is exactly the same. I vote with my dollars. I choose not to purchase software from vendors which assume that I will attempt to steal their products.
For a number of years I have been a regular user of the Intuit products, including Quicken, Quick Books and Quick Tax. Stories about the product activation features in the current versions of Quicken prompted my decision to NOT upgrade Quicken or Quick Books and to find alternatives to meet my personal and corporate accounting needs. The stories (which first appeared some time ago, but without details of the mechanism) about Quick Tax, led me to purchase the TaxWiz product this year.
I will not recommend or purchase any (non-game) software which can leave me without access to my data.
Michael
I strongly suggest you check out Microsoft Money Deluxe 2003. It can certainly print out invoices, and let you design the forms. I haven't used other features you are interested in, so I don't know about them.
I suggest you grab a copy of MS Money from Kazaa or something (Deluxe is what you need, that's the part of it that's got business features) to make sure it has what you need, then buy it if it's right for you.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
But I think it's their fault if they have to get online to activate their own igloos.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. Its about everyone telling you what to do.
Democracy isn't about no one telling you what to do. It's about everyone telling you what to do.
I used TT for over ten years. This year without knowing about the activation, I bought it again. I live in two states and do my taxes on two computers used only by myself. Intuit says I have to buy TurboTax for each computer. Well I am now using Tax Cut and won't use the TT for doing my taxes again. Tax Cut seems to be OK so no more TurboTax for me. Why didn't they just make it good for one SSN? I guess that would be too simple. Even for a SSN along with the name of the taxpayer. Intuit is in serious trouble. No one I know will buy it again.
You should be able to print nice invoices from QuickBooks on an inkjet printer without using preprinted forms, but there is no facility for designing the invoices.
You can, just need to look closer. It has an invoice editor. I spent many an hour tweaking and retweaking the invoice template for the repair shop where I worked.
I remember that to which you're referring... I never said there was not any copy protection, competing file formats - there were transgressions of virtually every type at every time in the history of personal computing, but early on they were the exception and not the standard now:
* Software sales used to be quality-driven, then it became advertising-driven, and now it is extortion/monopoly-driven
* The most pirated software in the early days of the PC was Lotus 1-2-3, which was also the biggest-selling software.
* Making hardware "open source" was primarily responsible for success: compare the Apple II or IBM PC to the TRS-80, TI99/4, Lisa, and other doomed systems that pushed to be proprietary at the expense of alienating their chance at grabbing substantive market share. (the only exception was Macintosh and that's only because a) they capitalized on Apple's early openness, and b) Microsoft has allowed them to exist in order to seem less monopolistic)
* The fact that there even were "word processor wars" where import/export paths wern't always consistent between competing products was still great for end-users, and also created a new market for conversion software. That doesn't exist now.
If you purchased the product you will see as part of the text indicating system requirements (Yes I know it is the fine print we never read) written in bold text, written in a completely STAND ALONE paragraph, it states the product must be activated on one computer by the internet or phone call. I am not talking about spy ware or any of that other shit. Which I agree with you unfair.
It may be more work if something goes wrong with the computer or other hardware. But that happens with toys, electonics, cars and even clothing on rarer occasions.
I got exactly what I paid for and I was pleased with it.
Windows NT Beer: Comes in 32-oz. cans, but you can only buy it by the
truckload. This causes most people to have to go out and buy bigger
refrigerators. The can looks just like Windows 3.1 Beer's, but the
company promises to change the can to look just like Windows 95 Beer's --
after Windows 95 beer starts shipping. Touted as an "industrial strength"
beer, and suggested only for use in bars.
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