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Intuit Disables Features in Quicken To Force Upgrades
Numerous people submitted a blurb from BoingBoing about Intuit disabling features in older versions of Quicken. Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
Why not use GnuCAsh? It's so difficult to integrate with online banking?
http://www.michel.eti.br
Considering there are no (that I know of) open source or not for profit alternatives that allow you to pay your bills online like Quicken does what alternative do users have?
I don't use Quicken, so I wouldn't know, but is there any reason why the transactions can't be done via FOSS?
I dream in binary.
.. to just producing a decent product and letting the market decide if it wants it or not? Why does every corporation have to be a blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing ass?
This is why I choose free software because it's in the spirit of cooperation rather than subversion.
Simon.
Or Red Hat not supporting Redhat 9
This article made a good point, but michael didn't have to add his flamebait last line. When you buy something, you usually expect it to keep working and not be disabled over time. Yes, maybe corporations are evil, but for the most part, when you buy something, it keeps working. I have a computer running Windows 95 that runs just as well as when we first bought it. That's coming from Microsoft, the Big Evil. We read the summaries to start discussions ourselves, not to have incendiary statements put in there just for the fun of it.
On a side note, is anyone here a laywer who knows about retail law? There could very well be a law that they're breaking here, opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit.
Support isn't the problem REMOTE DEACTIVATION is!
FYI, Quicken 2002 is only (2005-2002=3) years old...
If I buy something, it should work for life or as long as I choose to own it. I also object to paid upgrades. For example, I paid £99 (UK) for iLife 4 from Apple. They have now launched iLife 5 which fixes flaws in iPhoto (amongst other things). I should NOT have to pay for it and will be pirating iPhoto 5 it as a protest against this kind of behaviour by vendors. Of course, there is no moral problem with NEW users paying more for a later version of an application than earlier versions. If you want to protest what Intuit are doing, refuse to pay them and look for alternatives. Protest with your wallet!
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
This really isn't meant to be anything, but, after the whole TurboTax fiasco last year, do you expect anything else from these clowns?
Now, for the M$ folks out there, there are only two 'mainstream' options -- M$ Money, and Quicken. Neither of which are that appealing. There's GnuCash, however, if you're not running a free operating system, you're probably not going to get very far.
Personally, I use GnuCash, and I'm quite happy with it. I haven't had any real issues with it, nor have I had any real complaints. (Printing would be one, but, I manage).
It's never suprising to see a company use whatever tactics it can do in order to keep its customers buying it's newest stuff. I keep on the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Why they decided to break their own application is a decision that's left to the reader.
I disable sigs...do you?
Perhaps the editors could wait until there is an official piece of information from Intuit before posting editorial comments? Seriously, maybe there's a reason why. Then again, maybe not.
<sarcasm>In either case, I believe we should be reactionary and attack Intuit, just like we do every year about this time. They did add DRM stuff to TurboTax one year. Bastards.</sarcasm >
(I do remember them pulling the DRM or whatever stuff from TurboTax. Maybe they'll do the right thing here. But since I don't have enough info, I don't know the right thing. So I won't jump on this bandwagon. Yet.
Quoth the editor: "Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
You should expect the price of the software to reflect what is actually being offered. The contract between Intuit and the users regarding the operation of the software should (part of the "Software License Agreement", which I cannot find on-line) should say for how long Quicken will support the operation of the software. That factor was included in the price of the software.
Before this can be resolved we need to look at the contract. Then there are two possibilities:
Can someone post the relevant terms from the agreement?
hy the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
Actually, I don't expect this, it's definitely not a standard industry practice. Oh, sorry, forgot that rationality takes a back seat when it's time to insult proprietary software.
Intuit is probable facing the same problems (at a bigger scale - they're public company and they have responsibilities for their stockholders). It seems that they have offered the online service for free, planning to get the cashflow from software sales only. Now, as the sales have decreased, they have to find a way to make people upgrade to their latest version, and I personally can't blame them.
You also have to take into account that they are probably still battling Microsoft... I am from Romania, so I'm not very familiar with the limited MS Money success. Is Money still an alternative?
Alexandru
From http://www.microsoft.com/uk/homepc/money/ProductDe tails.aspx?pid=003:
Internet-based services available for two (2) years after activation of Microsoft Money or 1 September 2007, whichever is earlier. See the Microsoft Money Internet-based services policy http://money.msn.com/Money/2005/GBR/IBSP.asp for details.
If you don't upgrade, you'll be able to use the software as before, but not the Internet-based services (AFAIK).
I work at a financial institution and am in charge of support for PFMs (Personal Finance Managers) including Microsoft Money and Quicken. The reason that Quicken is sunsetting support for online banking in 2001 and 2002 is that your online transactions actually come through Intuit's server, which accesses your bank server on your behalf. You can still use the older versions of Quicken, you just can't download transactions.
Microsoft Money on the other hand still works since it connects directly to the bank's OFX server. Although my bank only supports 2001 and newer, we have users that are actually connecting with Money 1999 with no problems.
Well, I'm really glad I read about this on Amazon last week. I was about to buy Quicken, since it's almost free if you're buying Turbo Tax. I knew Intuit was Evil, but this was just too evil for me: they lost the sale and I'm sticking with Microsoft Money. It's a sad day when Microsoft is the lesser of two evils...
The issue isn't "not supporting" old software. It is purposefully breaking it so people have to buy the new version.
If you still wanted to use Windows 3.1 it would have all the functionality that it has always had.
and like it or not that's what buisness use
if you dont include Windows then you might as well be offering software for a Atari STFM as far as buisness is concerned
I received a similar letter a few weeks back and immediately called my bank to find out if this was really going to affect my ability to use their online banking services. They told me that this will NOT cause any problems and I DON'T have to upgrade to continue using their online banking system. The only thing that I'll lose is my ability to Intuit's help desk, which I'll never do anyways.
Call your bank and check. You probably don't have to bother with it.
I don't see the Problem.Any Software Vendor could allow or deny some features.Maybe keeping this Feature working,costs more (in Upgrades or Patches),then developing of New Software.I could understand them for doing this.Also,how many User are working with this "old" Version? Will Upgrades bring you any Advantage?In these Case maybe not,but in other Cases surely!Remember Windows 95 and no USB working?Now with W2K or XP,you just plug any USB-Hardrive and Bingo!200Gigs of Storage in 5 Minutes.
Michael using his power as an editor to troll! And I thought he had grown out of that.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Do you have to pay a subscription fee for Quicken's online payment system? If not then I guess as long as the upgrade price is reasonable it seems fair to charge a small amount as a kind of subscription to their service, as you can't expect companies to provide a service for free indefinitely (and as a bonus you keep your version of Quicken up-to-date)
A question from someone who doesnt use quicken: Can you please elaborate about the service that quicken 2002 used to provide? Is the service provided by Intuit's servers so that it costs Intuit? The article says "these transactions pass through my bank, not Intuit" so does it mean it doesn't have anything to do with Intuit and its servers? Then how can intuit "disable" this? Thank you.
Some really high end software is on a lease basis, and if you dont pay your re-occurring fee it quits entirely..
Had to support one once that gave you a *2* day grace period.. Every so often it would expire on a Friday.. and would die on Sunday... Forcing me to dial in to jump thru the hoops on my day off.
And no, you could not renew early..
And if you dont renew after a week or so, you have to buy NEW licenses.. Oh, and it was required to use this in order to do business. No alternatives.
The rant above aside, this is the ultimate goal of all software companies: repetitive, perpetual, income
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Quicken's Sunset Policy
FAQ
As I recall, a couple years ago Intuit came under fire for their production activation scheme and their draconian copy protection in TurboTax, which secretly installed code in the boot sector of the hard drive to prevent the CD from being copied, but also apparently caused some CD writers drives to stop working properly and was near impossible to get rid of. It turned into a major PR nightmare for them, as word spread quickly across the internet of what TurboTax was doing to people's PCs. A good number of their customers left for TaxCut. Several months later, Intuit was forced to admit publically what a dumb decision it was.
Well, it appears that Intuit did not learn their lesson, as this is likely to turn into another PR nightmare for them. How do companies become so dumb?
What does this online billing service do? And what does Intuit has to do with it? I'm using GnuCash, and I can do online bank transfers quite fine. I don't see anyone else except me and my bank is involved in transfering money? I already noticed that things like those account-to-account transfers are not common in the US, where paper checks are still widely used - they are almost dead here in germany, and we got HBCI for syncing GnuCash with our bank account. No need for a "financial software corp" to engage in my bank correspondence.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
I bought this electronic drum set for my kid at Toys 'R Us. A year, later, this guy in a yellow and orange vest comes to my door with a hammer. I let him in and he proceeds to smash the drums into tiny fragments, making my kid cry. He says, "Sorry, the model of your drum set is out of date. You have to buy the new model." What else could I do? I had to pay another $50 or my kid would go nuts.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
-- Dan
After foolishly upgrading to Quicken 2005 from a perfectly good 2003 I find that I can't download transactions from my bank which I could have done with the earlier version. The reason? Intuit has gone with proprietary version of the OSX format called QSX. So by upgrading you have access to fewer features. Financial institutions have to pay a fee to use the QFX form.
Last year, the feature shutoff was that the older version would no longer be able to download quotes. Since this is the feature I use most, and my version was five years old, I "upgraded". Since then, I have become an expert at restoring from backup. For five years, I _never_ restored from backup, now I do it at least once a month, because Quicken regularly corrupts my data. Tech support? The guy in India was willing to charge me $20 or some such fee to walk me through the "restore from backup" procedure, but since I'd already done that several times, it wasn't necessary. He was unwilling to admit that maybe a financial product should never corrupt data, even if the file was big.
when I actually BUY something from a store I can expect the owner to creep into my house at night and steal part of it back?
damn capitalism sucks
CodeWeaversHas their own version of Wine but almost all changes are rolled back in the main tree. I bought version 2, and don't need the features of the new version 4.1, but if I understand you, it's perfectly fine for me to save on the measly $40 and pirate this product?
I would guess that many bank Web sites include some sort of bill-paying option, though I would also guess that there would be an additional service fee.
(unless, of course, you have loads of cash -- fees are often waived for people who don't need fees to be waived)
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Intuit have formally written to all it's UK Quicken users saying it's no longer going to supply Quicken or their tax software here - so they've sent a final CD for free and put all it's eggs into Quickbooks for the SME market. So, it looks like a good incentive to move to GNUcash now.
Okay, so Toyota builds the Corolla 2004 and now they come out with the Corolla 2005 which fixes problems with 2004 exhaust system. (Owners of the car know what I am talking about). Now using your logic I am free to go to the local Toyota dealership and steal the new Corolla 2005 model. There is only one problem with you logic..you forgot to factor in the jail time involved at which point after serving your sentence you will need to steal the next version. 8P
while(1)
{
steal();
sleep(307584000);
}
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
That is a pretty rude comment. I am sure open source and free software ocasionally force users to update/upgrade their software because of technical reasons....
You know... maybe i am now convinced.. ALL software should be free YEA YEA YEfree software... screw it.. i don't need to trade my skills as a software developer.. i will find something else that will earn me the same amount of money.. and still have time to dable in software?!?
you guys are somtimes morons.. Michael.. if you work for a company that sells software/services for software you are one dumb person... heck that goes for the rest of you here... even the few that are tech support staff and network admins.. you may not have your little job if someone else was not able to make a few monies off their skills as a software developer.
yes it sucks these users are now locked out.. hmmm slashdot is locking me out of some features just because they want to make a profit.. heck way back when i didn't have to see so many ads... i guess that is what you get for useing open/free source.. ads.. they have to make money some how.. ha ha..
This is called poor buisness, an alternative should be offered at least such as a free upgrade. In the worst case, users should be advertised how many days are left before their product expire completly and it should be written on the box that this product is only good for 3 years. It also reflects a poorly written core engine that can't adapt it-self over the time.
Might be bait and switch, might not be.
I don't use Quicken, but if the communication involved is, literally, only between the user and a financial institution, then I'm not sure how that capability could be disabled by Intuit.
If the Quicken relays data to a financial institution via Intuit (why?), then Intuit is within its rights to alter or eliminate that capability. (Doctorow should check the terms of his Terms of Use agreement. I'd be surprised that Intuit agreed to maintain that facility, without change, in perpetuity.)
The same thing could happen in an open source version of Quicken if data was sent to banks via a single central facility, if a code upgrade or rewrite was frustrated by the need to maintain the old code at that real point.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
please name the flaw in iPhoto 4. i know iPhoto 5 has added features over iPhoto 4, but not any kind of bug fixes.
I got fed up with Intuit's bug-ridden software and abysmal tech. support in 2003 and switched to MoneyDance. The GUI isn't as slick, but I ended up spending way less time on finances because the program's well-written and well supported. Instead of talking to tech. support people on the other side of the world who are just reading from a support database you can get email back from one of the developer's in a couple of hours and your questions are answered quickly, accurately, and for free.
I looked at some open source programs at the time, but the big draw for me to MoneyDance initially was it will automatically download transactions from my bank, and there's a great matching algorithm to stick the transactions in the right budget category.
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
I expect it to keep working forever - i.e. until some combination of hardware/OS change renders this impossible. I don't expect it to be supported for ever.
Neither do I expect any "Free Software" equivalents to necessarily provide all that I need, when I need it with decent paid for support.
I don't expect much.
I bought quicken a few years ago...i think it was around $75 or 80 dollars...i just upgraded to Quicken 2005 because I want the most current software...especically when it is handling my finances. I dont really see a problem. My guess is that you are wanting to install this on a pirated copy of XP or something. The software is not that expensive...what is the big deal. This is something that you should expect from a company like Intuit. Do you scream at Ford when your car breaks down? Did you know that that purposly use parts that have a 2 to 3 year life expectancy? Everyone does this...get over it...use it or GnuCash or write your own.
Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right. -Hunter/Garcia
I'm a Mac person (before you rant, I also have a PC so I'm not a Mac screamer) and I have software going back to 1986 (and a few computers in my closet). Actually, a lot of it still works if I want to run Mac OS 9.x). But, No - I don't expect software to work forever nor do I expect the software company to provide me with upgrades for life.
I use Quicken. I have for years. I don't remember writing more than 10 paper checks in over 6 or 7 years and I like it.
I don't want something for just making transactions. I want something that integrates the transactions into a database and Quicken's format suits me. The export for the tax report at the end of each year is also important.
I upgrade software like Quicken about every 3 years. Not a big deal. I'm not a Quicken fan - but I've tried several other programs (except Microsoft's Money) and Quicken does what I need.
My opinion is this is a lot of crying by people who expect more than is reasonable or realistic (e.g.: the comments here that if one buys software it should be good for, or updated for, the persons 'life').
Forced upgrade, yes. But Intiut sent me a free copy of Quicken 2005 via US mail to do the upgrade.
Not that I've done the upgrade yet, but....
I just assumed that everyone who had already purchased Quicken was getting a free copy of Quicken 2005. Is this not the case?
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Doctorow, et al, are exercising their free market power by switching to something else. That's how competition works. Intuit did something that they don't like and they are going elsewhere. What subsequently happens to Intuit is irrelevant to them, even if they agree with you that it is "a blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing ass".
Unless Doctorow signed a contract with Intuit obligating it to maintain that service forever, without change, there's little he can do about it other than go elsewhere.
The equivalent ahppens in FOSS every day as developers abandon projects and leave behind orphaned software. Cooperation doesn't get you much when no one wants to coppoerate.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
As a swede i dont really understand why you would need an application to do your banking. We just connect to the web and use a small code generator to log into our bank. Well inside its just a matter of paying the bills and be done with it. All transactions is saved and can be viewed online. The need for an application eludes me so please enligth us non Americans.
What does quicken/MS Money do and why are they needed? Am i wrong in assuming the American banking system is a fairly bit behind those in use in other parts of the world?
HTTP/1.1 400
"when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
I write code for a living, but unlike Quicken I have work ethics.
Cheers,
Adolfo
We switched to USAA for all of our banking about 3 years ago and it's been great. They just sent us a new Quicken CD in the mail free of charge. I'm guessing they didn't want to hassle with forcing people to upgrade. Free Quicken,1% cash back on all of our purchases with our Debit Mstercard, and no ATM fees makes it nice.
you've been trolled
I'm bored enough to eat trolls.
Enjoy looking like an idiot already?
What's that? Is that a little girl I hear? You hear that whining Ace? What happened to mister big mouth?
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
"Why the BoingBoing submitter and Mr. Doctorow are so upset about this I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
You really expect most users to understand that, despite the fact that it hasn't happened in any visible, widespread way yet? You must be shitting me.
Besides, proprietary competitors (TaxCut, MS Money, Moneydance) are quite capable of competing by building a reputation for long-term support.
Intuit is unusually sleazy; remember the TurboTax activation debacle.
And since when has software not relied on a for-profit company? I use a mix of F/OSS and proprietary software. My rule is that I use whatever gives me the best result for my money (considering the value of my time+cost of software).
Personally, since it was already installed on my machine Windows XP Pro works fine for me. I've tried Linux several times. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and it still requires more time to figure out than I care to put into it. If I have to put more than a couple of hours of effort into setting it up/using it/learning the other software it's NOT cost-effective for me to install. I'm better off buying proprietary software like Windows XP that I think works better out of the box than Linux. (Disclaimer: that was a personal opinion, I respect other's different opinions on the issue.)
On ther other hand, Firefox is great, it's free, and it was initially supported by a for-profit company, Netscape, releasing some source code and opening it up. The Linux distributors, Red Hat et al, provide some support (albeit indirectly) to Linux. If they weren't able to make a buck on Linux, it'd be a different piece of software today. So even free software gets some support from for-profit companies.
Until F/OSS software applications provide the same kind of reliability/usability as proprietary software then I will to continue to evaluate each piece of software on it's merits, not just on the fact I save a few bucks and have the "comfort" of knowing I can modify it if I need to.
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
What utter rubbish. So open source companies are not "for-profit"? Get real. Of course they are "for-profit", how else can they pay the salaries, business expenses and the like?
Intuit's behaviour stinks - those customers purchased functioning software - to have it later disabled, is in my view, a theft of functionality and should result in criminal prosecution.
This is consumer fraud at its worst. My guess is Intuit is in a cash squeeze and needs to raise some $$$ fast.
We're going to see the same thing in a few years when Microsoft starts refusing to issue activation keys when you reinstall XP because it too will be EOL'ed.
I use browser-based http://www.mvelopes.com/.
It's subscription based, but runs on Linux, Windows and MacOS.
Budgeting is its strong point instead of after-the-fact expense tracking like Quicken.
Yes, over time, a company or a project has to move forward. Sometimes that leaves older versions out in the dark.
In this case, there is no evil plot. The upgrade to Quicken 2005 is free. They should have mailed you a CD. If they haven't, there is a very obvious way to contact Intuit; from the Quicken Bill Pay home page:
"To continue accessing your account, you must install your free copy of Quicken 2005 Premier* and upgrade to the improved Quicken Bill Pay.
[filling removed by me]
* If you have not received or have misplaced the new software we sent you, and/or the letter that came with it, please call us toll-free at 1-877-486-8844 for further instructions.
robert
I had a similar experience with Quickbooks and their payroll service. It's bad enough that Intuit wants $200 a year to download some tax tables into Quickbooks (especially if you are your only employee), but the payroll service will not work if the version of Quickbooks is over 3 years old.
And just to annoy me more, I recently upgraded from Quickbooks 2002 to 2005 by purchasing a copy at Sam's Club, expecting a $100 rebate and I found out after the fact that Sams Club does not "participate" in the rebate program despite this phrase on intuits rebate web site.
Upgrader Rebates from ANY Retail store such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco, Fry's Electronics, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, etc.
I've already submitted a complaint to the BBB. Intuit has surpassed even Micro$oft in push upgrading, in my opinion.
Let's see, Quicken 2005 Deluxe goes for $49.95 at their website. If the full Quicken service is available only for two years after this version has come out, that makes it out to roughly $25/year.
Isn't that kind of a cheap price for a software+service that apparently many people need to manage their finances? If the transactions really pass through Quicken's servers then they will incur some costs and will of course want their customers to pay for this service. On the side you get the latest version of their software.
Freedom in software is all fine and good, but I don't think simply being cheap and wanting everything for no cost is a good reason to push OSS solutions to every problem. Financial connections are one aspect of software where free solutions are pretty hard to accomplish since the banks won't co-operate with small players and the overhead of running a large financial software network between banks, insurers, brokers, investment houses etc. will cost real money.
For us Mac users, there's just no substitute for Quicken -- not even MS-Money, and no, I'm not going to boot into Virtual PC for something so stupid.
Intuit started me on this obsolesence track back in 1999, when they forced me to upgrade. At the time, it kind of made sense, though -- they took away the dial-up aspects of downloading data. There was not really any sense in preserving it with internet access everywhere.
--Jim (me)
Hey, Clueless:
1) FreeBSD doesn't use GPL. It uses the BSD License.
2) You can incorporate it into any software as long as you give credit where its due.
3) Do you research and stop posting off topic.
Pretty simple: If you buy some software (in the UK anyway) i.e. in a shop and you are not expressly and clearly told before purchasing that certain features maybe disabled then they've broken the law. AFAIK, (& ANAL) click-through EULAs don't let them off the hook. Otherwise you're out of luck, they have a profit to keep up and they're going to do it any legal way they can, thats called capitalism. If they do it illigally you can use capitalism too and sue them for every penny but most companies have better lawyers than you'll ever afford...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
When dealing with older versions:
End of support, I can accept
End of updates (free or paid for), I can accept
Disabeling features in an otherwise legally purchaced and paid for version to force an update ?
That I have problems with...
How would people react if MS disabled all networking, the ability to display resolutions above VGA or printing on Windows versions older than W2K instead of just stopping support on them ?
Not very well I suppose !
Has anyone ever really cracked the protocol that Quicken uses to talk to the bank? Here are a couple of good reasons I ask:
The Windows version works with every bank that supports Quicken. I, as a Mac user, don't have that choice; only certain of the financial institutions work with the Mac version. So for BankOne I'm okay, but for my Ford Money Market I'm stuck downloading stupid little files and importing them (or doing it by hand). There's no technical reason that the Windows and Mac versions have any different.
Likewise, there's no technical reason that Quicken 2002 couldn't continue to talk to the bank. Somewhere there's a stupid little bit in the protocol headers that say "hey, I'm the Mac version" or "hey, I'm Quicken 2002" -- and it's the bank's software that rejects the transaction.
So, c'mon crackers? If you can defeat virtual every copy protection known to man, you can figure out how to defeat version checking in Quicken, right?
--Jim (me)
My pirated version of 2002 treats me just fine. I don't really want to have to upgrade to a pirated version of 2005... what a hassle. Damn Quicken and their evil spawn.
Well, I was happy that the latest version of Quicken is coming with the Mac mini I ordered, but now I'm not so sure I want to support Quicken. While this Sunsetting pretty much sucks, they do have costs associated with the some of the services. Are those upset by this move willing to pay an annual fee to use their old software? Isn't this really a reason to rent software in some instances?
A few vocal folks talk about the virtues of free (as in speech) software, but most of only care about the free (as in beer) aspects of it. This is pervasive in the US. That is why we have outsourcing, Walmart, a huge trade deficit, and a crappy job market. Everyone expects a free lunch. I am no different and maybe one day I'll wake up and realize the the folly of my ways.
-- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
Actually, it was the other way around. The junkyard guy was suing CIBC to make the stop faxing the stuff!
-m-
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
"Yellow journalism" refers to the use of yellow ink in the printing of an old sensationalist newspaper, The New York World.
It was brought to the pinnacle of sleaziness by William Randolph Hearst, who used his empire to destroy the hemp industry, foster anti-immigrant sentiment, and commit numerous other evils.
I realize it sounds racist, but it ain't.
In an ongoing effort to provide reliable high-quality products and services, Intuit periodically retires (also known as "sunsets") older versions of Quicken, thereby discontinuing Online Services & Live Technical Support for these versions.
Under this policy, the most current version of Quicken (currently Quicken 2005), plus the prior two versions, will be supported, subject to certain exceptions. Sunsetting older versions of Quicken allows us to focus resources on enhancing our products and providing support for more current versions, which are used by the vast majority of Quicken customers. The result: a better customer experience for millions of Quicken users.
They're making it sound like some sort of political decision... "for the greater good!"
What a bunch of assholes. You're a business. You sold a product. Now you're trying to take it back by disabling features that people have already paid for. You just can't polish that kind of turd.
I have Quicken 2005 (bought before I knew about this crap). And it no longer supports importing QIFs from my credit union. I asked my credit union about it, and they said Intuit wants somewhere around $50,000 to enable the new format.
Intuit needs to die.
I was forced to upgrade and found that the new version sucked.
It takes forever to start. It nags to join "Quicken Online" and is covered with ads and menu items for other products.
Many of the reports are harder to find, and there is absolutly no new useful functionality. They just moved some menu items around to make room for links to unwanted products.
Another case sad case of a once great company taken over by marketing drones that just finds new ways to rape their users.
Yes, I've known that for a while, every time you perform an online transaction, even a statment download initiated from your banks website, quicken always connects to intuit, but you can block quicken from connecting to intuit.com if you use a personal firewall, and still dnload your transactions. When you attempt to download your transactions to Quicken, the fw pops up a notice that quicken wants to connect to some intuit.com website, eventhough I am connecting to my bank instead, and do I want to continue. I click NO and the transactions are still downloaded.
My memory sucks, but isn't Intuit the evil corp behind the tax software digital restrictions management fiaSCO several (2 or 3?) years ago? Where they locked out processing of more than one return, and at the same time locked out access to tax info and previous returns except for printing, and screwed up installs through the drm software?
If this is the same company, I'm guessing they are going to miss their quarterly numbers BIG time. Because for them to do this just before tax season, when they depend on good will and word of mouth, and sites like this to sell their products at critical buying times (this is their Christmas season), they would have to be either extremely stupid, or facing numbers so bad that they are doing something radical so they can point to it to soothe their shareholders somewhat.
My guess would be extremely stupid.
You know what to do. This tax season, remember the stunt they pulled 2-3 years ago (again, if it was them) with digital restrictions management, keep in mind the stunt they are pulling now with Quicken, and vote with your wallets. That's the only thing a company like Intuit understands. Money. Spend yours elsewhere. And let them know about it. Don't throw out the letters urging you to upgrade, print why you aren't upgrading on them (drm, Quicken stunt), and mail the letter back to them.
At least when you do your taxes this year, you can get a little satisfaction while doing them, instead of grief over what you are paying in taxes. It's a good distraction. You're sticking it to Intuit after they tried sticking it to you, while Uncle Sam sticks it to you as usual.
Quicken has been treating their customers with disdain for some time now. I suspect this latest move is a desperate ploy to make up for the profit it is losing because of alienated customers voting with their feet. Ironic.
Which nations do you trust to use nuclear weapons responsibly?
they just *choose* not to do so.
The term yellow journalism has nothing to do with race. And frankly you have nothing to do with intelligence.
Since the nineties, however, they've started bundling more and more web-based services into their products, ostensibly for "free." In reality, of course, you're paying for these by purchasing the software, but they are nonetheless services, not software. In this case, Quicken has decided to stop providing a service for software that's over 3 years old, presumably because they need another cash infusion to support the service.
This could all be fixed pretty easily if they were charging for what they're really doing, instead of giving you something 'free' that's really bundled into the software price. Instead of selling the software and giving away the services, Intuit should sell the services and give away the software. This would mean that poster had no basis for complaint, since he could upgrade his software for free and continue paying for the service as he always had.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Why on earth would I pay for in-program spam and hand over my financial data to a company that has proven it holds contempt for its customers?
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
"I ended up buying quicken 2K4 for about $5-10 mail-order."
Yes, but do you want a company you don't trust to have control over your finances?
It's tax time. Intuit sells TurboTax. Do you want a company you don't trust to have complete control over your tax records?
This is the same kind of knee-jerk political correctness that got a man unjustly fired for using the word "niggardly".
You, sir, are an asian-australian that is too easily offended and too little motivated to study the language you (mis)use!
BTW, I apologize in advance to any joints that I might have offended by using the derogatory term "knee-jerk".
I cannot belive a company is trying to make! What a bunch of bastards.
Intuit 'repented' and removed the copy protection but I was much happier with H&R Blocks stuff because of function, usability and company trustability.
Your use of confident assertion as a persuasive technique is outstanding. For an approach to the issue involving reason, see: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id =3555212
My credit union has a FREE bill-paying service on their website. Of course, CUs aren't beholden to stockholders and a Board of directorsd to make a profit - they prefer working for the good of their members and making enough profit to pay staff and interest.
From the Quicken Canada website, regarding their latest version of Quicken (XG 2005, $99.95 CAD):
Yes, thanks so much for only disabling one of the most useful features in the product.
"I don't know; when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
You guys really are fucking communists. The more I read this site the more I realize how fanatically ultra-leftist many of you are. Leave America in your hands and we'd be Cuba in 20 years.
Get with the program. Marxism was a dud, dudes.
This isn't meant to be a troll by any means, but c'mon. Both open and closed source have their pros and cons so please let's stop writing things that are guaranteed to start flame wars.
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
I found your comment helpful. However, I read the Intuit announcement page, and, at a very minimum, Intuit has handled this situation very poorly.
The core problem, it seems to me, is that the online banking software is extremely primitive. For example, when I last tested it, there was no unique serial number available from the banks and credit card companies for every transaction. So, it was possible to import a transaction twice.
There should not have been a third party like Checkfree involved! Intuit has a long, long history of bad design decisions, it seems to me.
Quicken 2004 runs very well on linux, via CrossOver Office. In fact, I use it for my finances. And it is quite nice.
I'm glad I've completely sworn off Intuit products.
{ - Generic Guy - }
I just download into spreadsheets. I don't use any financial software.
BTW, I apologize in advance to any joints that I might have offended by using the derogatory term "knee-jerk".
I'm glad you said that, because all of my marijuana cigarettes were on the verge of being insulted by your remark.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
So a $19 upgrade to Quicken can end up forcing the purchase of a $1000 new computer ... and some of your other software will have problems running in it so it needs to be upgraded too.
Switch to TaxAct for taxes.
I did last year after the DRM fiasco, and had no problems at all.
You know, for those of us who work for a living, this sunsetting isn't much of a shock. A lot of enterprise software is licensed for one or two years, with the license managed by FlexLM or a dongle (these god-foresaken things took a ten-year hiatus, but are showing up again). You don't pay the support fee, you don't use the software--period.
So, what's the difference here? Well, Intuit is still allowing users to USE the software--just not do anything through their systems--compared to software just stopping at date:time in the FlexLM license key.
Intuit has probably done the due dilligence, and decided that as a company, they would rather not spend resources supporting software developed 4.5 years ago, and sold 3.5 years ago. Overall, I don't blame them for doing it, though.
Let's face it, a $50-75 retail product really only brings so much back to Intuit (say $35-45 or so; the rest is markup for the middlemen). Of that, so much is allocated to primarily FREE support and upgrades. (There is a $25/call for supporting those who don't RTFM.) Eventually, the flow of money from that product allocated for support dries up--for both support and upgrades--as sales decline, and the development resources are best placed on money-generating products (read, current or under-development).
For all of you rabid OSS people out there, it's called running a for-profit business, which has a pretty dang good product. (Don't believe it's a good product? Look at who GnuCash is trying to emulate...QIF isn't Microsoft.)
Next time I buy software I'll make sure I only use a product from a for-loss company. That way I'm guaranteed the software will work for years to come.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
But after reading the posts here about exactly what people in the States use Quicken for (primarily online bill-paying rather than using cheques... er, 'checks') I have to ask - is there no equivalent in the US of the UK's Direct Debit system, whereby the banks themselves automatically pay your bills on a set date from your account, usually free of charge?
You must think in Russian.
This is similar to releasing new formats for word processors and not backporting the changes to older versions. For example, Microsoft didn't backport their Word 2003 format to Word 5.
As a for-profit company, Intuit can't make a business case for backporting new online protocols back to Quicken 2001/2002, especially when they are a market leader in Microsoft's crosshairs and new versions of Quicken can be had pretty cheaply.
Whoa, whoa. Hold up there, Tex. This is not consumer fraud in the slightest. This is product management at its core.
I do this stuff for a living. And I've never sold a product to a customer and given them an end-of-life (EOL) schedule at the same time. It doesn't work that way, mainly because you're never exactly sure when your EOL date needs to be. Sure, you have some guesses, but often they're wrong.
Very good reasons for product EOL are declining demand and support/maintenance costs. Tech. support and software maintenance cost real money, and if a company is seeing usage of a product drop off, why support it? Tell your user base, 'listen, you got 4 years out of a $50 product, that's pretty good. Upgrade for a discount and let's get you on something modern that makes both of our lives easier. If not, hey, good luck.'
Companies are not obligated to support/deliver product in perpetuam, else they'd be flat-ass broke. It's not fraud: trust me, there's enough legalese, and this is a common-enough and accepted practice, that it's perfectly legal. Do open-source developers support 10-year-old code builds, when modern stuff is better and more popular?
And yes, MS will eventually drop support on XP, when the time is appropriate for them. Just like they did Win95 and WFW. 'course, at that point, they may stop checking authentication on older SW, as the market will ensure that you upgrade to support new software/hardware. Who knows.
Don't know about a 'cash squeeze', but Quicken will be canned here in the UK as of 31/01/05, while support for the application is being discontinued as of 31/01/06. Could be that they're buckling down to ride-out a storm, I suppose.
Half right; it does refer to the W.R. Hearst-style of imperial, pandering journalism, but it does not originate from the color of ink used, but rather because of the war between Hearst's and Pulitzer's papers over 'The Yellow Kid', the first popular comic strip.
l ow +kid%22+%22yellow+journalism%22&btnG=Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22yel
Here is a the link, (from the article quoted in the Michael's story), to the Intuit statement:
http://www.intuit.com/support/quicken/sunset/
where Intuit states (amidst the spin doctoring):
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Manually enter all your data, you lazy bastards, and then Intuit can't tell you when you have to upgrade.
I think I've owned three versions of Quicken in my life. I upgraded from the first one to Quicken 2000 because my version had a Y2K issue. And I upgraded from 2000 to 2003 because I was moving to OS X from OS 9 and wanted a native version.
I enter all my transactions in manually and don't give a flying fuck about Intuit prematurely sunsetting perfectly functional products-- they're not getting my money every year, ESPECIALLY when the Mac versions of Quicken don't have 100% complete feature parity with the Windows versions. Unless Intuit sends someone to my house to delete Quicken 2003 from my Mac and shatter my install CDs while I'm at work, I'm not upgrading it.
Yes, we know that Open Source, would alleviate this issue. That's one of the reasons we read Slashdot. But we don't really need to be beaten over the head with it -- believe it or not, proprietary software has its place, and I'll be glad to back that up with a full-fledged, fleshed-out argument, if you'd like. In the meantime, though... it's a nice day (here, at least ;-) -- go outside and enjoy it.
We're not talking about bug fixes here. We're talking about purposefully disabling features that work fine. That's fraud. And in some jurisdictions, it's also illegal. But what do they care - they're going down the tubes anyway.
Quicken Bill Pay sent me a free copy of Quicken 2005 Premier to upgrade with. Unfortunately I use the Home & Business stuff, but they will sell you that for 9.95 if you call them. I would rather pay nothing, but the new version does have a couple of improvements, so I don't feel like I totally got the shaft. For the vast majority of Quicken Bill Pay customers though, this is a free software upgrade, and that is a good deal.
Just like they did Win95 and WFW
The diffrence is Windows 95 when installed works just like it did when new. Same for Windows for Workgroups. Intuit's software no longer functions as it did new.. Online bill pay is broken. That should work between the bank and the end user. It should not be something Intuit gets in the middle of and act like the troll under the bridge. That's what the beef is. They broke it. It's not a case of them no longer supporting it.
The truth shall set you free!
In a lot of online-enabled games, like Starcraft, the license says that the company can revoke the online capabilities with a certain amount of notice (usually thirty days). Was one of these terms in Quicken's license? If it was, no reason to complain. If not, can people get a class-action suit together?
Le français vous intéresse?
The feature though is not a feature of software but a service that you've bought. They are not disabling any feature that does not require accessing their service. This is like saying that because I bought my browser, my favorite website must always be available for free.
There's generally no expectation of such from any service-based outfit that has a one-time fee. In general you are required to maintain membership within the organization to be able to continue use their service. Even GPL only requires you to distribute the code for three years after your release and not in perpuity.
i am posting this because i too am not a fan of quickens tech support.
O ggdEvZJo9.0@.3bb5d6c7/7!login=true
i paid my quicken tax again for the 3rd time in about 6 years - quicken home & biz 2005. i need to track a bunch of consulting for different companies, as well as my wifes 'horse boarding' company (our horse + 2 friends horses).
i need to create invoices in the business section and i like to make a PDF rather then a hardcopy and mail. all of our customers like to receive the invoice via email.
i was shocked when i tried to print an invoice to a PDF and got an acrobat barf-error message. other reports and views print to PDF fine.
i called tech support and the tech on the other side duplicated the problem. i then asked what can be done. he said nothing, that the developers wont listen to the tech support guys. i wrote several emails and sent them to as many different depts as i could, sales, Q&A, user feedback forms, etc.
i eagerly awaited the next patch. when i downloaded it i noted that they said amongst other things that they had taken care of a number of printing issues. alas, the PDF problem still exists.
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@1013.Y
(you have to log in but you can log in as guest)
cliffs:
modern version of quicken cant print to PDF
tech support duplicates problem, intuit wont do anything
http://www.intuit.com/international/
- Argentina
- Brazil
- Chile
- Colombia
- Costa Rica
- Denmark
- Ecuador
- France
- Mexico
- Netherlands
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
Seems to me that it's not just their software that is expiring, but the company as well.I smell law suits. After all, how likely is it that the product packaging said "Expires April 2005"?
With FOSS, anybody can pick it up or even fork it.
That's a MAJOR difference there.
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
The software continues to work just fine, but certain services that interact with external parties stop working. Duh. Do you expect Intuit and the banks to support old protocols and ancient software forever?
Computer users need to understand that the only time upgrades are absolutely never needed are in a standalone situation where no new software or functionality is needed. It costs money to interoperate with old software/hardware as well as new stuff. It costs money to update software. Even F/OSS costs time/money - it's just donated to the community.
F/OSS would be succeptible to the same problem when old protocols cease to be supported by the banks. Sure, someone might update it, but you would still need a new version, just like with paid software.
Speaking of bug-ridden software, Quicken has a security flaw for people using shared computers. I tested this on Windows 2000. Try this:
1. Log in Windows as an admin.
2. Use Quicken, save your file in "My Documents".
3. Log out.
4. Log in as a non-admin user.
5. Launch Quicken.
6. Note in the "File" menu, the most-recently-used files are listed. Pick one.
7. The file opens!!!
Bleah. The non-admin user, who cannot get into the admin's "My Documents" folder, can nevertheless somehow open the Quicken file within that "My Documents" folder. Presumably it uses some cached version of the file stored in the Quicken folder.
Instead, they'd link to fifteen gazillion different support libraries in at least four wildly different languages so that it takes one of the major distributions' packaging genius to get the thing to compile.
Anyone who thinks I'm joking needs to sit down build GnuCash from scratch or to a lesser extent build a full-featured version of WINE or The GIMP.
However, thanks in part to those same "unsung hero" packagers, a lot of systems including GnuCash are becoming more modular, so it's ever easier to compile just the bits you need - thus sidestepping some dependency issues.
And... lest we forget: it is actually possible to build on wild disparity with FOSS. Seriously trying the same thing with such a shambles of disparate closed software would leave Sisyphus silent in awe.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Another kneejerk from a corpratist whose .sig says "Don't just save the whales - collect the whole set" in every post. You're such a corporatist that you can't even conceive how a corporation can shut off network access to some features, to force an upgrade. Michael's insight into how likely is this scenario in any other network-reliant proprietary software is relevant, even if it's a quick take on an evident problem. "Sure there are some real issues..." bla bla bla. You have nothing but lip service to the global corporate welfare problem, but you've got plenty of bashing for a report on the global market leader in personal finance forcing more profits from already satisfied customers. Even if this turns out to be a mistake by a confused Intuit user, or a con by a phisher, when these scenarios are genuine you obviously reflexively side with the global corporation unilaterally cutting off the consumer. You better have a decent corporation to suck off, if you're going to prefer their company to humans.
--
make install -not war
Are you wearing an "Eat me!" tee-shirt? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
But it's to be expected from a company that's going down the tubes (pulling out completely in 15 countries, stopping development of Quicken for a bunch more).
So people are going to cut them out of the loop and deal directly with their bank's web interface. Talk about taking the wrong action in a declining market!
- It costs nothing (though you can usually get Money/Quicken Free After Rebate)[
- It is cross-platform
- It will import QIFs
- It uses double-entry accounting (though this might take some time getting used to)
- No features expire
- All upgrades will also be free & occur more frequently than once a year if needed.
- Upgrades haven't broken import/export from old files from older versions
Diadvantagesurpmi gnucash
y
All done in about 30 seconds including the downloads.
I personally think Mandrake rocks, but Debian and SuSE (and derivatives) users will know the feeling too.
It's an accounting program. Leave the masochism to the packaging team.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The technical aspect of this discussion has been covered well by others and puts Intiut in a more favorable light. The financial aspect is also easily handled by those willing to risk $5 in an online auction.
An older copy of Quicken continues to run, without online bill pay, if you choose not to upgrade. If you require/desire/lust after online bill pay, you will typically pay $5+ per month to your bank for the service. Surely you can pony up the extra cost of an older copy of Quicken as well.
I bought Quicken 2001 in 2000, and to answer alot of the "why does anyone need this?" comments, I use it as alot more then "just paying my bills". Quicken helped me get out of debt by producing nice net worth graphs, showing me my income vs expense for the month etc. I pay my bills online through my banks website, not Quicken. But I do use quicken to update my stock portfolio. This is very difficult to do manually. But this service is being cut off as well. They sent out coupons for people effected by this to get basically 50% off, but there is a reason I havn't upgraded so far, they havn't added any new worthwhile features in YEARS. The interface just looks "slicker" now (I think more confusing). So I may end up upgrading only cuz i have to, but if instead of strongarming people they should just make the reason for upgrading more compelling.
Could this be any more racist? I'm an asian-australian and I'm deeply offended by this comment.
I'm an Australian, and I'm deeply ashamed that another would post such ignorant bullshit. Every phrase involving the word "yellow" isn't a jibe at Asians. See The Yellow Kid for the meaning and origin of that phrase. And "yellow = cowardly" isn't about you either. Actually, living in Hong Kong I've never understood why "yellow" is used to describe skin colour -- everyone is just some lighter or darker tan. Yellow's main connotation here is the imperial colour, and gold; so it's all good.
http://jmoney.sourceforge.net/ Free and open source jMoney is a no-frills solution that does the job. If you don't require all sorts of fancy features, jMoney will do the job well. It is also cross-platform Java based. I have made the leap from a pen and paper check book because it ran out of pages to this about 6 months ago and I am never looking back.
Let me start off by saying that I have been using Quicken since 1998, and I used to upgrade every year. But starting from 2001 IMO their product has been going downhill. I recently was considering upgrading to 2004, and the universal feedback was that it is a piece of C***. Ditto for Quicken 2005. As one of my friends put it "Unlike MSFT which takes a crappy product and improves it over time, Intuit took a perfectly good product and destroyed it over time". Back to "what do you expect?"... I do NOT expect Intuit to support old software for T_infinity. That is unreasonable. However, I do expect Intuit to improve their software over time. Assuming that is ... they want to
retain some of their loyal customer base.
I do not know how Quicken's market share has
been doing over the past few years, but anectodotal experience suggests that fewer
and fewer Quicken "loyalists" are upgrading to
newer versions. And that cannot be too good
for INTU.
It will be very funny it the constant "improvements" in Quicken turn out to be the very reason for its doom.
-SD
Denial is not a river in Egypt
Yes, you should be offended. Racism is *everywhere*. Here's some examples of insidious racism that has crept into our lives:
white sale
white paper
white-out
"Dreaming of a White Christmas"
blackboard
black-out
blacklist
Black Forest
Black Sea
"Paint it Black"
brown bag
brown-out
Charlie Brown
UPS's "What can brown do for you?" ads
yellow journalism
yellow as slang for "cowardice"
yellow birch
yellow dog contract
yellow fever
pinky
pinko
and that's just the tip of the iceberg! For those who find racism in anything that refers to colors found in human pigmentation, life is a never ending struggle to avoid being offended. Your plight has touched us all.
The author of the "Troll article" post is deceiving the readers trying to present that it is somehow not the Intuit's fault and Intuit had to force the upgrade in order to continue to provide the check-writing service.
False.
Intuit is forcing the upgrade for money reasons and very little else. I'm saying this because I could not import data from QuickBooks 2002 into TurboTax 2004 and it has nothing to do with check-writing. Intuit said I had to upgrade to QuickBooks 2003 or later to import the data.
Intuit's customer service sucks. Call them and the first thing they'll tell you is to have you credit card ready to pay for the support call.
Intuit feels it can milk its customers indefinitely. Well, I'm definitely looking for replacement, be that GnuCash, TaxCut or whatever.
Some people aren't very careful about who they send faxes to. I had this fax machine sending my home phone number. It kept trying to deliver the fax to my home number, it got to the point where it was calling every 20 minutes and blasting my ears. Finally I hooked up my fax machine to the number and took the fax. While the info on it wasn't as sensitive as the banking info. It still wasn't something you wanted in public.
My Weblog
So do I. Since you can't it becomes funny.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?
Is it possible to mod the article itself as flamebait?
For those of you who're upset, how far back should Intuit go to support obsolescent protocols?
.for something designed to be used monthly, it's essentially free.
As a guy who deals with this for his own work, I gotta agree that a coupla releases in fine. Otherwise, you end up needlessly carrying your turds along with you to the benefit of your non-revenue and non-innovation* producing customers.
While I can understand the need for long-term support for ERP software, Quicken's something like $50. .
*put another way, some customers aren't worth having.
I'm with Anonymous Coward here. Maybe my +1 karma bonus will get this showing on the listing for more people...
If you pirate software (even if you 'know it's wrong'), you have NO PLACE telling someone else who pirates software that what they're doing is wrong. Grow up, join the adult world, and pay for the products you use, then you can start lecturing the 'spoiled brats' out there how to live. But right now there's a big credibility gap.
For the record, all the software on my three computers is entirely legal, and I think you're both assholes for pirating.
Comment of the year
If you only pay a few bills a month like most people, it's probably OK. But then you probably don't need software like Quicken to manage your finances. If you have a large number of monthly bills, the double data entry becomes rather time consuming and troublesome (more chances for error).
Doubt if anyone will read this with so many posts already. I believe Ad-Aware did the same thing. They had an old version, and the old version ended up breaking with the new updates. So instead of fixing the problem, they just gave up (if I'm not mistaken) forcing everyone to upgrade to the new version. As for the pricing concernings, not sure. Since it's freeware if you don't want to actively scan all the time.
Not the same. In your analogy, "Yankee", it would be as if Win95 continued to work locally, but MS turned off the ability to access the internet with it. It is not about "support", it is about crippling working functional software.
The feature though is not a feature of software but a service that you've bought. But they are disabling a feature that does not require accessing their service! This is like saying that since I paid for my browser, I should still be able to use it to access slashdot even after two years. Quicken should be able to die, and the software should keep working.
I have been banking at a large institution for many years now and, since they don't directly support Macintosh computers, I have downloaded the equivilent of a backup file to do online banking. The bank also allows me to do electronic bill-pay from their interface, so to have Quicken do it (as opposed to just record it) is not necessary.
I have no need to upgrade to Intuit's current application because of that, unless or until they change the format of their backup file (the extension is .QIF).
So for banks that allow you to download .QIF files instead of using the Quicken electronic transfer interface, the old versions may continue to be quite useful.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
"...purposefully disabling features..."
They are not disabling a feature. They are discontinuing a service. The software on your drive, bit for bit, is the same as before. However, if you try to connect to Quicken the program will not be able to access the BillPay service.
How is this any different from Microsoft withdrawing Windows Update for older versions of Windows? At some point it becomes uneconomical to support people with years-old versions of the product.
Its not so funny when you know that :
..
Red Hat , Mandrake. Novell(SuSe) , Slackware , Conectiva , Red Flag , Knoppix , etc
All put togheter equals a 7% Of the Desktop Market share when Apple is only 3% and that Intuit support them and as a release of Quicken to support them.
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
Howdy all. I use Quickbooks Pro 2002 (another Intuit product) to run my mail order business, and I do all my credit card billing through the Quickbooks Pro payment portal. Its extremely convenient, and the whole reason that I upgraded from Quickbooks Pro 6.0 (which came out in 1999 or 2000 I think). When I write up an invoice - all I do is punch a button at the bottom of the invoice and it goes out and bills my customer's credit card, and then marks the invoice as paid. It makes it easy to track who has paid (it actually changes the color of the invoice, and makes the invoice items uneditable) so I don't make the mistake of double billing or sending out an unpaid order. I process an absurd amount of orders for a one-woman company, so the convenience and simplicity matters!
Now - Quickbooks has an automatic updater - when ever new updates for my version of Quickbooks are available, it auto-downloads and asks to install it. Over the past few years, the payment portal has been updated several times, so I know that they can keep it current with what ever the standard or back end is. Updates, by the way, come out 1-2 times per year.
However - the note that I received from Quickbooks this week informed me that they don't have TIME to keep updating older versions anymore - so they're going to cut off the credit card billing portal in April rather than continue to provide updates. I have to upgrade, or I have to find a new processor.
Now - I have actually been considering getting a new processor anyway. When I first bought Quickbooks Pro 2002, the credit card billing system was marketed as a partnership with several different banks, and the user was given a choice of which bank, each with different service options, to use. Fine - I was happy with my choice of Wells Fargo, and they were pretty speedy transferring billed funds into my account, and answering questions.
Last July (2004), I received a letter from Wells Fargo saying my account had been transferred to "Innovative Merchant Services" - which is entirely owned and operated BY Quickbooks/Intuit. The amount of time it takes to receive billed funds into my account has doubled. When I called to ask why the deposit time had doubled, I was told that Wells Fargo could "do it better because they are a bank". My question - if they could do it better, why did you force me to switch and take away my ability to choose and/or shop around? To "improve service" of course.
Not only does the "improved service" take longer (my theory is that they are generating interest by holding onto the capital for an extra 48 hours) but this December, during the busiest time of the holiday season, there were numerous service outages during the day, unlike previous Decembers with Wells Fargo. Fortunately for me, as a mail order business, I can "try again" in an hour. But anyone with an actual customer waiting would have been completely screwed!
There are numerous other examples of QuickBooks features that start out both free and open (allowing you to send invoices through your e-mail, for example), but have changed over time to become closed (you have to use Quickbooks e-mail) and eventually I'm sure will no longer be free, either. These changes, by the way - are frequently patched in with the updates, and with no warning.
That said - I couldn't run my business without Quickbooks. There just aren't any alternatives that can do it all so well. If I had more time, or more employees (or any employees), I'm sure I could put together some kind of a conglomeration of various other programs that all combined would do what I need.
But it still really gets my goat. Or to put it another way - we hates them, my precious.
I'm an asian-australian and I'm deeply offended by this comment.
You're also a fucking idiot. Have a nice day.
Probably the EULA had some catch-all, like "By clicking 'Agree', you agree that Intuit can make any changes to this agreement without further consent or notification".
You know, they may have discovered that their protocol(s) were insecure, putting your banking information at risk. They may simply be trying to protect you from having your bank accounts hijacked. I mean, it is within the realm of possibility.
*Darb
This sig intentionally left blank.
I have been a Quicken user for many years (probably 12+, just guessing). I am using Quicken Deluxe 2000 and am happy with it. I got cut off from using Quicken.com last year, so I can no longer download my mutual fund quotes into Quicken. I also cannot do a direct transfer in Turbo Tax (well at least I couldn't last year). I have to export from Quicken into their export format and then import into Turbo Tax.
I would buy an upgrade but all the reviews I've read say that Quicken 2004 sucked. I'll have to look closely at Quicken 2005. I would pay $20 / year for the online access to be re-enabled for my Quicken 2000. Of course I can see how that would probably not be a good move for Intuit business wise.
Sorry, my typo does not change my opinion. The software industy is partially responsible for piracy. In 1985, my company developed the world's first desktop publishing software (marketed by a 3rd party and available for the British Broadcasting Computer) and despite it's innovative features (some not even available today), it was priced at £49. (I'm not contesting Apple's pricing by the way, which is very fair.) But most apps are over £300, which is totally rediculous and encourages piracy because a spure of the moment purchase is impossible. I paid £450 for Dreamweaver MX 2004 and it a) Has masses of bugs, b) The ftp component is useless (as covered on various forums and almost admitted by Macromedia in my support phone calls to them) and it's slow as hell. And that despite the fact I paid £300 for an earlier version that was even worse but too early to qualify for an upgrade. When the sofware industry learns to be responsible and provide a product a product that works, piracy of software will fall. (Look at how Apple's excellent iTunes service has helped the music industry.) I could go on, and as a software developer, I refute that greed works. It does not. Be good and the people will worship you.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
More here.
http//injoke.org -- Culling The Interesting
I have Quicken 2000 Deluxe and had access to the features from Quicken.com cut off about a year ago. I did not use online bill paying. I had used the online transaction (i.e. I could log in to their website, enter transactions, and then download them into Quicken when I got home). This was useful when travelling. I also used to download daily quotes from my mutual fund.
I wouldn't think these would have been Checkfree features, but I honestly have no clue. I would upgrade but I've read bad reviews from the more recent versions. I would happily pay $20 / year for access to their web services with my current version. I know that this will probably not happen anytime soon. Hopefully the reviews on the 2005 version say it doesn't suck.
However, if you try to connect to Quicken the program will not be able to access the BillPay service.
I swear, you people seem to need explanations in words of two syllables or less.
Quicken does not need to communicate with Intuit in order to provide online banking services. It doesn't cost them anything to allow their products to continue to work. This is nothing but a shakedown.
Darn... I guess I used a couple of three-syllable word above, but there's always dictionary.com.
i have allot of on quicken CDs around... never used them. instead i when full professional and bought peachtree accounting. more power than i need, but who cares..... allot of years providing good fortune 500+ services.
so why should i work with a seccond rate product like quicken or MS money?
aww the constitution
just buy a new one, claim it on tax, and shutup already.
who knows, you might even enjoy the features in the upgrade.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/29/2 215223
I tend to agree. Its one thing to stop providing a service, its another to stop a program feature from working.
In this case, downloading of account data from your bank into your software should not require Intuit's servers or services. It is a cash grab. The question is, what can one do about it?
Nice FUD. TurboTax exports my tax records to PDF* every year, so I don't need to have the program installed from year to year.
I'd like to try an open source tax program. Where can I find one?
* Intuit includes a PDF export feature in the Windows version and Apple includes print-to-PDF in Mac OS X.
For more information, click here.
If there is no technical reason why it won't work then surely someone will make a patch to remove the version/date check and re-enable the features.
Sounds like all you need is a screen scraper and Quicken server emulator to retrieve the Quicken.com data and make Quicken think localhost is an older version of Quicken.com.
Once I've purchased something, whether it's a truck or a piece of software, I expect it to keep working. If the stereo or the rear window defogger fail, I expect to be able to get them repaired (possibly at my expense). If the stereo and rear window defogger fail because Ford deliberately did something to turn them off, I expect to sue Ford's ass off.
If a feature of the software stops working due to a deliberate action of the vendor, I expect to call them up and have them turn it back on. Failing that, I expect to sue them, or join a class action suit.
If when I bought the software, the packaging and license clearly stated that the XYZ feature would only work for three years, that would be another matter.
As others have pointed out in the comments, you are using the service. The website update feature and check printing feature are both going through their servers. The problem is that their design made something that should be a stand-alone feature into a service.
I have an early version of Quicken - and recently when I installed it on my new PC they told me I'd have to PAY to get a registration code from them.
So, I complained, only to be told "Our EULA allows us to charge you for that".
Well, I read the (1 page) EULA that came with the product and it SAYS NOTHING OF THE SORT!
But, they don't care - they still insist their EULA gives them the right to charge me to install the product I've ALREADY PAID FOR.
I'm disgusted by all this, and will NEVER buy another Intuit product as long as I live. I actively relate this story to others and recommend that they never buy Intuit software either.
In 2004 I was working at a company that was in the process of becoming a bank. We were investigating the ability to offer Quicken and MSMoney transaction downloads. To offer the Quicken format for download, we had to pay a rather substantial format fee. To use the MSMoney format was free. When MS start looking like the "good guys" in a licensing situation, you know something's out of whack! :)
I can't post any more specifics here due to NDA stuff.
> This is consumer fraud at its worst. My guess is Intuit is in a cash squeeze and needs to raise some $$$ fast.
like being short 1% of analysts 30% profit margins?
... You can get quicken usually for around 15 dollars at Staples with mail in rebates. I don't think 15 dollars a year is that high of a subscription service. Try finding an acountant for that much.
This isn't simply a matter of dropping support for the software; they are forcing functionailty to stop working. Meanwhile, 2005 only supports their proprietary file format and not the open version of the format, and they charge banks separate fees for each operating system they support. The result of this is that the will now force users into a subscription model (and basically force them to use the Windows product, as many banks won't support the Mac product, though my bank is mirabile dictu one of the exceptions) when they didn't sell it as such.
Maybe because you're perfectly satisfied with whatever software version you're using and have found "upgrades" to be buggy, for starters. Case in point, Norton Internet Security 2005. Downloaded the upgrade from the Symantec website, paid $45 for it, and now I need to format c:/. I don't want to format c:/. It is a PITA to do that, and I'm going to have to back up a lot of shareware and use up hours of my life because Symantec doesn't have a decent uninstall/upgrade program and messed up my hard drive on my one year old laptop. I used CheckFree for a decade or more, but Quicken bought them out. Same services at the same price ($12.95/mo)for their newly-acquired CheckFree customers, but they charged their other customers less ($9.95/mo). Then my credit union came out with a great deal: no charge at all for sending at least 4 e-payments per month! And they provide online tools for reconciling your monthly statement, plus I get a monthly snail mail statement, and I can send incidental payments via online, like the flowers for a funeral I just sent a couple of weeks ago. Check around to find out what credit unions are available to you. They are usually a much better deal than regular banks, and not all credit unions are closed to their particular species. For example, mine is open to other family members who aren't in my profession.
When the consumer buys Quicken, they own the program now. Then they may CHOOSE to get the updates. Intuit should not send an 'update' that crashes or uninstalls Quicken. But they can stop updating, since that is a service, and they cans stop supporting it, but they can't ta
Sexual?
I expect the software I bought and paid for to continue working exactly as it has since the day of that purchase. Why should anyone have to pay for features that may eventually get disabled? One expects to get what they paid for. Not to slowly lose features over time, or after a period of time.
IMO software companies have an obligation to fix bugs and release patches, but have no business at all disabling features that are supposed to be standard with the software you bought. If they can't make their newer versions of software attractive enough to me to buy the upgrade, then that is their problem, not mine.
I have worked in a remittance processing environment for nearly 13 years. Payment processing of standard bill payments for large credit card issuers is more automated than you can imagine. Remittance envelopes and the statements inside are usually designed for quick efficient processing by automated equipment. Equipment such as this and this make quick work of most payments with minimal staff. Check 21 promises to streamline processing of paper checks even further.
Online payments often go through middlemen, who take a cut of the action, and whose payments are then processed manually by the bank. It can take longer to credit and clear an online payment than a standard payment.
Michael's ranting about a "for-profit company" makes no sense when Slashdot is owned by OSTG, a for-profit company. Slashdot even sells banner ads and subscription services for profit. Malda, Michael, and the rest are OSTG employees, not volunteer rebels fighting the system. When you talk about Michael inciting interest in a story, what you really mean is baiting people with completely inaccurate articles (and there have been a ton lately) to get more page views for OSTG's ad clients.
Give us a break, Michael.
"For-profit company." You mean like OSTG? Sigh. Michael, you're a hypocrite. You're an employee of a for-profit company. Slashdot even shows big banner ads now (anyone remember when they didn't?) and pimps subscriptions to users for money.
Please, Michael, stop injecting your ridiculous commentary into EVERYTHING you post.
I received a note from my credit card company that I would need to upgrade to Quicken 2005. The great thing about the letter was that it included the fact that I would be receiving a copy of Quicken 2005 for FREE. And I did. That said, I think it's time for the large retail banks and credit card companies to view Quicken for what it is -- an extension of THEIR networks and a cost saving one at that (electronic statements versus paper, online remittance versus checks, etc.) Maybe then I will only see advertising in Quicken 20XX from my bank rather than all of the marketers that Intuit has signed up.
I was horrified to get a notice from Paytrust recently about them joining with Intuit. I assume they were bought by Intuit.
Intuit has gotten so anti-consumer over the years. I almost wish Microsoft had won the lawsuit between the two companies, just out of spite.
When the Quicken yearly upgrade routine began in the late 90's, I migrated to GNUCash, then evenually went to using a basic OpenOffice spreadsheet for my account handling. I had been a loyal, paying user since the DOS days.
I was a major Turbo Tax paying customer for many years, too. Then they pulled that stupid DRM scheme a few years back. I tried an alternative suggested by a Slashdot poster (Tax Act, I think?), but that was only for a year, as I felt it was an inferior product. The next year, I went to H&R Block, which I'll proabably continue to do until I can file a EZ form again (maybe in a few years).
I absolutely love Paytrust -- I manage all of my bills and loans with it. However, I'm drafting a letter to physically mail to them once I've converted all of my accounts to an alternative or back to the check and post office routine again. I must tell them that Intuit has proven itself to be anti consumer, so I can't in god faith remain with an affiliated company.
I doubt they'll take notice, though. Such a shame.
Method of processing duck feet
Software who's source is not available cannot be trusted to act in your best interests. Whenever you run such software, you're giving some other organization control over your computer, and they will make your computer do whatever is in their best interests.
There are only two preventive measures I can think of, and only one that will work.
The first is to have some 'trusted' organization vet all the software you run to make sure it doesn't have any tricks in it. Of course, it will be easy for that organization to collude with the software makers without anybody finding out until possibly much later.
The second is to require that all software that runs on your machine have the full and complete source code available for your inspection.
Note that drafting all kinds of regulations that require companies to not do things like this is a very inefficient and inexact form of the first. We see how well it's been working for spam and spyware.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
...no open source project has ever stopped being maintained and left adrift, ever.
Because that's how the stock market works. If a corporation isn't staffed with blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing assholes it's not as profitable, and sooner or later the nice guys get 'let go' and replaced with said blood thirsty, morally defunct, money grabing assholes. It's inevitable.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"when you buy software that's dependent on a for-profit company to keep working, what do you expect?"
I would expect them to honor the contract I bought the software under. That's the basis of free trade. Jumping to the conclusion that free-as-in-beer software is the only way to ensure you get what you expect is an irrational leap.
Always interesting and insi... Oh, sorry was thinking of something not written by Michael. His articles always have added commentary that is disinsightful and toned in a way that presents all the worst bad nerd traits.
Stop. Please. You're hurting Ame... Well, Slashdot. Unfortunately, it's not as straightforward as delisting Katz who just wrote silly articles, his news posts are pertinent just never his added comments.
Oh and to take a stab at being OT, Quicken will never get any of my money if their going to play the shell game with products they sell.
http://www.somethingpositive.net Funny + bitter = comedy gold
Here in Europe all banks provide this, and their interface is usually through the browser - some require MSIE, but not all.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
damn yellowists.. they'll be the downfall of us all. /me looks suspicously at orange.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
What are cold calls?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The moral of this story is, avoid software products that operate off of the "sofware as a service" model.
Imagine if you bought a car that relied on special gas that the manufacturer would stop producing in 3 years. Would you buy such a car?
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Not only does he make sure to post unverified, inflammatory "articles" submitted by similarly-minded /.'ers as himself, but he also continuously feels the need to add those shitty little quips on to the end of the article which he clearly never reads, and NEVER verifies for accuracy.
Well retardo, if you read the article you would have found a link to their website where they confirm the story. You are an IDIOT who didn't read the article.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
There is an easy fix: have the president for all the banks get together at the next conference and agree to stop paying the fee. When one bank refuses they have no power. However when all banks stop working and tell the customer to call Intuit, Intuit is forced to change their ways.
Its just that banks are willing to fall over that allows Intuit to get away with this.
As the others mentioned, there are open source solutions that would work too, and might be a better idea.
Try and do a fresh install of Symantec Internet Security 2003 and it will not get LiveUpdates for the Antivirus definitions nor the IDS Definitions. I spent much time doing fresh installs of Win2k on various machines, going via different provider links and arguing with Symantec Tech support that it was not my machine or internet connection. With full LiveUpdate logging turned on in Internet Security 2003 it showed various files were missing from the Symantec site but Tech support would make no comment on the missing files. VERY ANNOYING
meridian at tha.net
yes, i exported mine last year. but 2 years ago turbo tax did not do this. And last year i was using Tax Cut due to intuit head-ass syndrome.
Funny thing is i bought tax cut, but bought it online. Then lost the download. They want me to pay like $10 to be able to download this now useless software again. Jerks. The lot of em.
if they're going to disable online bill pay them I'm going to disable the copy protection...
The truth of the matter is *your* bank won't allow quicken to import your data. Intuit has to work deals with every bank and some banks refuse Mac support.
The reason is quite simple, and quite insidious. Banks don't want you to use financial tracking software, and especially they don't want you to use a third party's bill payment software. Because the banks want to sell you these things themselves. So, the banks use the Mac market as a test bed. They pull Mac support from Intuit - disallowing them to support automatic imports. The banks know that if they don't generate too many complaints from the small mac community (who are quite vocal) then they can pull PC support next. Which puts them in line to sell their own financial and bill payment software.
Joseph Elwell.
And this is something else I don't understand, all this dependance on tax preparation software. Really, how many of the people here are incapable of doing their own taxes? I mean, I do a 1040 long with a Schedule E for corporate dividends and S Corp income, with a K-1, and my corporate return, an 1120S. This stuff is not, um, rocket science, and I'm sure mine is more complicated than the vast majority of typical wage-slaves' who take the standard deductions. If you track your finances with something like Quicken (and QuickBooks in my case), and categorize things properly, it is rather trivial. I also minimize withholding by maxing out the W-4, and file quarterly estimated taxes, with a target of owing a little bit come April 15th, rather than giving Uncle Sam an interest free loan (he appears to have gotten a $30 loan from me last year). This is all easy enough if you keep a good handle on your finances throughout the year.
I suppose I could understand the target market of those putzes they show in TV commercials lately, using TurboTax to file online (for a fee of course), and then blowing their big refunded interest-free loan to the government on some vacation. But slashdotters? Aren't we smarter than that?
Larry
It seems that if you download a .QFX (aka WebConnect) from your bank, then you cannot import it in Quicken 2005 without being connected to the web.
.QFX file in a text editor, all the info I need is there...
I wonder why... If i open the
Where the fuck do they need to connect to anywhere....
Seriously does someone know how this is supposed to work ?
Imagine every new online banking feature -- you have to ask, "will this work with the 3 year old version? the 4 year old version? the 5 year old version? the 6 year old version?". Now you're testing 7 versions every time you add a feature!
Yes, that's why it's better to simply disable them -- if you aren't going to waste 10 engineer's time testing them all. Otherwise, if it doesn't work -- guess what? You just screwed the user's finances!
And no, I don't work for Intuit -- this applies to any software.
Mac OS X!
My iBook came with Quicken 2004, and I can install GNUCash via Fink.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
1) Microsoft has committed to supporting business products like Windows XP Professional for 10 years. Considering Microsoft counts from the end of the year, we've barely started into year 4. You've still got till 31 Dec 2011 before Microsoft can pull out the "not supported" card.
2) As clearly stated in the activation FAQ:
Did you steal my sig? :)
And here I must type some other drivel since slashdot (wisely) requires 20 seconds before hitting 'submit'.
OJ
"Artificial Intelligence usually beats real stupidity."
Mvelopes Personal is the most effective spending management system ever. This revolutionary system uses the traditional envelopes budgeting method, partnered with today's technology, to help you manage your spending, while living within your income--and most of it's done automatically! Mvelopes Personal enables you to: * Access all of your secure financial information from anywhere, at anytime * Recover 10% of your income from hidden spending * Eliminate existing debt * Always know exactly how much you have left to spend, and how long it needs to last It is pretty cool.
What's Fink?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Am I the only one who thought an Eskimo hacker was to blame for something when they read the title?
Check out Moneydance at http://www.moneydance.com/. Its not open source but it does run on every platform because its a Java application. And the best part is that it already works with your bank! I switched from Quicken over a year ago now and I've never looked back.
I've been using Moneydance on my Mac for over a year now. It doesn't have *all* the features of quicken but it has 95% of the features you actually did use. http://www.moneydance.com/
The problem is that their design made something that should be a stand-alone feature into a service.
It appears I was wrong. I just couldn't concieve that they'd funnel connections through a central location. I guess it is all about control...
The last time Microsoft changed the policy, they increased the support from 7 years to 10 years. They're committed to at least 10 years of support.
Mainstream support ending basically means you don't get free support incidents anymore. You can still pay per incident, and security hotfixes are still released.
Lastly, mainstream support will NOT end next year, 31 Dec 2006 is the very EARLIEST it could have ended. Per the Lifecycle Policy FAQ, "Microsoft will provide mainstream support* for either 5 years after the date of general availability, or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer." For Windows XP, this means support will end 2 years after Longhorn is released. Current estimates put Longhorn in 2006, which would push mainstream support out to the end of 2008. Extended support will continue for at LEAST 5 years after that, but will be at least 2 years after Longhorn's successor is released. I don't think you need to worry about your support options running out any time soon.
"the end date is from Microsoft's site, not some factoid pulled out of the air (unlike longhorn)
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifewin"
I was the one who pointed out that page. What I don't think you understand is that the longer Longhorn is delayed, the longer Windows XP remains in mainstream support. So even if Longhorn shipped tomorrow, mainstream support for Windows XP would continue through the end of 2007, and extended support through 2012.
But my only issue is with your original statement:
"We're going to see the same thing in a few years...because it too [Windows XP] will be EOL'ed"
The page you point out states that extended support (meaning the product has NOT yet reached end of life) will be available until at least 31 Dec 2011. If by "a few" you meant "more than 7", then your point may be valid, but in general "a few" indicates a quantity closer to 3 or 4.
"...when Microsoft starts refusing to issue activation keys when you reinstall XP because it too will be EOL'ed."
What is your basis for making this sort of statement? When you buy a boxed copy of XP, you're purchasing a perpetual license. As in, it's valid in perpetuity, unless you violate the license terms. Microsoft may be a big bad evil company in your eyes, but they're not going to stop allowing you to use the software you've paid for. We covered that a few posts up. If you're so thoroughly convinced otherwise, would you object to a gentleman's wager on the subject?
The longer Windows Bug-Whore is delayed,. the better. Hey, let them buy another SCO license while they're at it.
Or is it you who's being loud while they chew?
This of course opens another question: can a vegetarian swallow in good conscience?
There hasn't been much discussion of the OP's tagline, no meating of minds, so to speak.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing