Quicken 2004 Premier

I consider myself a fairly proficient user, having used Quicken for 11+ years, although I have used Quicken primarily for investment tracking--not the banking and expense tracking features. Overall, the conversion went better than expected. I encourage everyone to take some time to back up the old version of Quicken data files and use the Custom install option to preserve the old version of the Quicken program. That way it is easy to hop back and forth between the old and new versions for easy data verification. At a minimum, run a couple of reports from the old version, so you are able to verify account balances just to be safe.

I did have a handful of items that appeared incorrect. I had the opportunity to use the Quicken Chat support. They are helpful (and free), for basic installation questions only. They will not handle any data issues at all and will refer you to their phone support. I decided to bite the bullet and call them (hoping desperately I wouldn't get charged), and when I explained that I had some discrepancies with my account balances right after converting, they spent more than a half an hour with me on the phone and didn't even ask for my credit card number. The issues really turned out to be reinitializing some reporting views that copied over from my old Quicken, as well as them providing clarification of how the new Quicken handles certain investment particulars. Bottom line: all of the data (my backup data file is 8 floppy disks!) transferred over without a hitch. The problems were all outside the data realm. I think they have actually improved their product support from what it was back when I tried (unsuccessfully) to upgrade to Q2001.

All in all I really do like the new Quicken. It offers much more in the way of reporting for investments than my old version did. I have not had any trouble running the program on my 3 year old machine. In fact, I have had Q2004, Q99 and AOL running at the same time and have not had a problem.

I did not give the product 5 stars, because I am not crazy about some of the new features--especially the way they changed to the dialog-type of entry for transactions in investment accounts. It seems like they want everyone to just use the downloads from their banks and brokerage firms which I prefer not to use. The new method of transaction entry will,unfortunately, be more time consuming. I'm not sure why they made this change. They also go a bit overboard with trying to provide the user with investment advice. I think they should just stick with providing a good product with good technical support and let us make our own financial decisions.

I'm a former MS Money user, so I coudln't give you a review on Quicken2004 from an "upgrade" standpoint. Only a fresh install standpoint. I switched to Quicken because 2 of the four financial institutions I use did not support MS Money. Only Quicken.

Someone mentioned this program is a resource hog on their 1GHZ PentiumIII. This product runs perfectly fine on my 550Mhz P3 with 256MB of RAM.

I have yet to experience any bugs or major inconveniences with this product after 3 months of use, and I couldn't be happier with it. I've owned a few versions of Quicken in the past and found them to be riddled with bugs and this version is definately different in my opinion. For the first time in my life, my finances are finally 100% in order.