How'd they do that? If I had any inclination to buy a company's product, that would remove every bit of it. Try GnuCash. People say it isn't as good, but a pencil and calculator is better than getting abused by software you paid money for.
what version did they disable? how could they do that?
At any given point in time Intuit only 'supports' the current version and the previous two versions of Quicken and Quickbooks. Anything prior to that is subject to having certain online features disabled.
A lot of the time, people are so set in their ways with a piece of software that they can't imagine switching. Especially for business-critical applications (bookkeeping counts too), they know a good portion of their customers are locked in.
The same goes for stuff like Windows, Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and others. There are alternatives out there, but learning a new interface and dealing with missing features can be a deal breaker, so they get away with charging what they do.
This is true. I only switched to Quicken when Money died. Money was better.
Anyway, Quicken will no longer import .qif files for bank accounts. It stopped automatically importing .qif files years ago but would allow the user to download them and then use the import feature to open the file and import the data manually. Now it won't even do that. As it used to work and now it doesn't, this had to be a timebomb built into Quicken 2010. Intuit wants banks to license their newer formats and users to upgrade so they slowly destroy the functionality of older versions. Bite me Intuit, just bite me.
Paypal doesn't support Quicken's newer file format so .qif was the only alternative to manual entry.yeah my version of 2009 won't do it anymore.
i never really cared since i check it every day or other day anyway.
Paypal doesn't support Quicken's newer file format so .qif was the only alternative to manual entry.
This is true. I only switched to Quicken when Money died. Money was better.
yeah my version of 2009 won't do it anymore.
i never really cared since i check it every day or other day anyway.
That's the sort of thing that leads people to piracy. When the stolen version works better than the legal one there's very little incentive to buy.
I'm a long-time Quicken user and no fan of Intuit but I can see how tough it is to continue to maintain a product like that. If there was no sunset policy, there would never be enough sales to justify keeping it around, and it would simply die. Heck if there was no sunset policy I would probably still be using an 8-year-old version. They are trying to broaden the user base by offering Quicken deals tied in with TurboTax.
Apply that to anything else, and does it still makes sense? I'm a fan of Maytag washers, but if they didn't arbitrarily reduce features, they would slowly die off. That's why I don't mind if you can't wash cotton after a couple years. I can still wash polyester, and if I really want to wash cotton, I can still do it in the bath tub...
I guess I don't see it as that drastic. To me the comparison would be that after a couple years, the washer still performs all the essential functions but loses one that added convenience.
Of course if downloading transactions is critical, you have to upgrade. For the users who don't have that many transactions, or don't care to categorize every single credit card purchase, downloading is probably not something they would care that much about.