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Show Me The Money - Microsoft Money Vs. Quicken
prostoalex writes "The weblog entry 'Show me the money' is an interesting tale of Microsoft Money from a developer who now manages software development in the Tablet PC group at Microsoft. Having worked before with Money, which was assigned a task of beating Quicken, Philip describes the disasters that happen when marketing and advertising people rule the software development: 'Money's success or failure was judged using the same metrics as MSN's websites. Metrics like minutes viewed per month. Like ad revenue. Like click-through. Stickiness. I am not making this up.'"
This just adds credence to a problem that Microsoft seems to be suffering from. The Marketing and Advertising divisions of Microsoft dictate the direction of the company. Sure, there needs to be some work done with their code-monkeys to stop these exploits from even being created in the first place, but maybe the programmer's jobs would be easier if they did not have to perform on a tight deadline created by those who have nothing to do with the products' creation. A shame too, considering that not all MS software is crap. I'm not an apologist, I'm just not afraid to admit that it's not entirely the fault of the coders that they have working for them.
MS Money is basically a browser-app these days, complete with "ads" for stock/portfolio management websites cleverly disguised of course. I liked it well enough, it came free with my notebook from dell, until i started hearing Internet Explorer "clicks" when i was "browsing" my accounts. A few clicks later, i realized i was actually on an internet site. putting my personal banking information that close to the internet without me being clearly aware of any delineation made me nervous.
Long Answer: Read Below
Those of us whom accountants might say have even somewhat complicated tax returns require a program to help categorize and summarize all of the various transactions. Now my Bank doesn't have enough information to do that... and they don't need it either (*dons tinfoil hat*)... and if they did I would find another bank (*removes tinfoil hat*).
I run Quicken all year long and when tax time comes around it's a matter of running the right reports and taking the results and putting them in the various schedules. Even the IRS is often satisfied with the reports generated by Quicken, though they may ask for actual receipts and such during the audit.
The point being that Quicken (sorry guys, tried moving over to OSS and wasn't satisfied with current state) gives me detailed Tax related categorization and summarization that my bank statement (online banking service) doesn't.
I
Quicken has much better set-up, more support, and a more professional look. Money has the ONE "killer" feature for me. It can show a chart, based on your bills and paychecks you enter in, showing how much money is in an account.
I use this to look at my checking account, and make sure that my lowest point of money each month remains at a certain level. Its very obvious weeks in advance if your checking account is going to drop below the minimum balance, etc.
I used quicken for a few days and couldn't find this feature, so I went back to Money.
A friend I know runs a small business. They use MS Money to keep track of small finance items, sort of like a cash book.
:-)
They still use the 16-bit version of Money from the Windows 3.11 for Workgroup days. Why? Because it's simple, and all it does is the books. They won't upgrade because all the later versions of Money want to go on the internet and do other fancy things making it harder - not easier - to use. This is one of the points that the article mentions first.
Personally, I use gnucash and it does for me
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows