Has Intuit Made Good on DRM Removal?

M-G asks: "It's tax time again in the US. Last year, Slashdot and other sites were abuzz with Intuit's use of activation software in TurboTax. As a result, many long time TurboTax users, myself included, sought alternatives last year and wrote Intuit to tell them so. After tax season, Intuit said they would drop DRM from future TurboTax releases and other products sold in retail packaging. While I have no reason to assume that Intuit lied, they did violate my trust last year. So, has anyone confirmed that this year's TurboTax is indeed free of DRM? What about products like Quicken?"

Comments

TaxAct

[Mr. Darl McBride]

I'd like to pimp TaxAct. It's pretty much a clone of TurboTax with a much sexier & cleaner UI and a cool tax reference book attached.

I love it because the developers are accessible and willing to listen and respond to feature requests, it runs under wine, and for straightforward taxes, it imports the previous year's data, asks if you've done any of a few major things this year, takes your W2 data, and completes the current year in no time flat.

You can buy and download the thing online, and there's zero copyright protection. They even encourage you to do multiple returns with it, so you can split the cost with a few coworkers without really breaking the rules.

Re:TaxAct

[Mr. Darl McBride]

and there's zero copyright protection

I meant zero copy protection -- no mechanical means of twarting duplication. Yes, there is copyright protection, as in someone owns and doubtlessly enforces the copyright.

Re:TaxAct

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

I used TaxAct this year, but now as we get closer to April 15, I've started receiving spam pimping their product (NOT based on the fact I used their product this year, I've seen it last year too).

I'm not sure if I can support a company that uses spam to advertise their product. I doubt I'll be using it next year if they continue.

Re:Why pay for this software?

[silicon not in the v]

"It's free to use, you simply pay for submission."

Uh, yeah, movie theaters are free to use, you just have to pay to watch the movies. (?)

Anyway, I checked that site, and they charge $39.95 to use their TurboTax Basic. What a rip! You can buy that retail for about $30, and lots of places have rebate deals, where it ends up being free, or you get a free CDRW drive or something with the rebate. Intuit sent us one of their TurboTax CDs in the mail this year, where you have to go to their website and pay to activate it. We went ahead and did that since we use TurboTax every year. It was about the next week that I started seeing the rebate deals and was kicking myself. I'll do it right next year. It's a great chance to get a good computer accessory for free once a year.

Re:They have made good I think

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't personally used it, but many many people I have talked to have said they took out the DRM and are allowing multiple installs from one CD (especially since they can't track it by CD-key anymore).

Federal isn't protected. They encourage you to spread it around and are letting stores give away "free" and $5 copies. After you're done with Federal it then tells you that you can't do state without paying. You have to buy state, and state is node locked to one PC.

Yes.

[afabbro]

I've installed it and used it. No activation. As it happens,

• I installed it on my laptop in January
• laptop was going to be reimaged so I installed it on my home PC a couple weeks later
• upgraded home PC to SATA drives and started from clean disks

So although I haven't pirated it, I've installed it three times on two different machines. It's worked each time. There was a minor bug with one of the installs, but I went to Intuit's web site and the problem and resolution was listed in the FAQ.

I did the math this year, and

Retail boxed Fed at Costco + Retail boxed State at Costco - purchase rebates + filing fees - filing rebates

was less than

TT for the web Fed + TT for the web State + filing fees

YMMV. Of course, it would been even cheaper to do it all on paper...

No protection for me, State or Federal.

[Talonius]

Someone else said they had GUID based protection but as far as I could tell that's complete bull.

I purchased TurboTax in January while I was on the road. I installed it onto my laptop and put all the preliminary information in place. February 2 my state was ready for download and purchase and I received my second mortgage statement so I installed TurboTax onto my desktop, moved the file over, purchased and downloaded TurboTax State, efiled, and had my refund on February 6th from the state and February 9th from the Federal.

No protection on TurboTax on either Federal or State that I saw.

As for Quicken I've been using it since Quicken for DOS and I've yet to see copy protection on it. The downloadable trials have protection on them ala you can purchase it; and the Quicken Basic version comes with the ability to upgrade to Deluxe by purchasing a key from Intuit, but I've never had a problem with copy protection.

I think in THAT arena it would be suicide. If I lost a computer and had to fight a software company to get my finances back I'd be ticked.

Free TurboTax

[Lish]

For the masses out there that are students, you can use the web version of TurboTax for free (including filing, and some states are also free) if you are 22 or younger (or in the military, or over 62). Check here. I've used TurboTax for the Web for the last few years and it's very nice. Even if you don't qualify you can try it out for free, they don't charge you until you either print or e-file.

There are also other web-based places that have different qualifications for free filing (eg. income restrictions, etc.). Go to www.irs.gov and click on "Free File".

DRM is gone.

[ant1832]

I work for Intuit and can confirm that the DRM in turbo tax in definately gone.

I think long time users who left should give Intuit a little credit for listening to their loyal customers and come back, afterall most other companies would have just ignored the complaints and left the DRM in.

Re:They have made good I think

[caseydk]

State is a terrible creation.

I live in one state and did some work in another state. Then my wife moved to my state (after the wedding) from another state. Three states represented, on with partial year residency, one with full, one with non-residency.

Their solution: 3 copies of TT:State at 29.99 each.

Luckily most states are getting their acts together and have the whole thing online.

Re:Mathcad DRM - What do I do?

[Animats]

Ah, yes, the infamous "CDAC11BA.EXE". Tha's Macrovision's C-Dilla, also known as SafeCast.

Actually, this is an improvement. Mathsoft's first try at copy protection complained if you had a debugger installed on the machine. If you had Visual C++ installed, Mathcad wouldn't run. I screamed at them about that, and they "fixed" it. People who do number-crunching work are quite likely to use both.

AdAware considers C-Dilla OK. It does some annoying things, hiding data on your hard drive, though. But it seems to be well enough constructed not to mess stuff up.

PARENT NOT INFORMATIVE

[Slowtreme]

Wait a min.

I bought TurboTax Basic, as I do every year. (I guess I didn't have my tinfoil hat last year) I opened the box, took the CD out of the paper sleeve, installed it, and started my taxes. They have been finished and printed a month ago.

I didn't bother to look at any of the papers inside, so a quick check... There is no Key or serial number.

Just how does a hash of my hardware lock an install to one PC?