Quicken Premier 2006 Personal Finance Software Description:

Quicken Premier 2006 Personal Finance Software review:
5 stars (Definitely worth the upgrade) - Just installed Quicken Premier 2006 last night, and so far I can say it was definitely worth the upgrade. I think Intuit did an excellent job of streamlining the reporting functions. Just much easier to navigate and figure out what data you want to view. The feature within the register of viewing payment summaries of different merchants and categories is also very nice.



As I have not yet set up my investments (a project for this weekend) I cannot accurately comment on this portion of the program.



In summary, the overall functionality of the program is pretty much the same, so if you like your existing setup in Quicken then perhaps you don't need to upgrade. But for me personally I've always thought the interface in previous versions of Quicken was a little busy, and so this upgrade to what I consider to be a much cleaner, more streamlined interface was worth it for me.



And by the way, I was able to find a full version of this product (CD only, no box or manual) online for $23... which was a bargain too good to pass up.
1 stars (Not for investors) - I finally decided it was time to upgrade from Quicken '99 (which I really liked) so that I could download stock quotes from the internet. Guess what - Quicken 2006 won't download preferred stock quotes, options quotes, or the pink sheet symbols for Canadian stocks! Quicken.com has all those types of quotes available, but they won't download into the program, making it largely useless for me. The only work-around is to create a Yahoo portfolio, download it as a csv file, then import it into Quicken. And even then, there is no "browse" to find the file. You have to manually type in the path EVERY DAY!



Downloading accounts from financial institutions is a great feature with one exception: The first time you log on to, say, your credit card account, the program may download hundreds or even thousands of transactions. If your account was currently up to date, you don't need these. There is an "Accept All" button, but is there a "Delete All" or "Do Not Accept" button? NO! You have to delete each transaction, one by one. I got to delete 447 of them. You can't even use shift or ctrl to select batches, it's just delete one by one.



These things really make me wonder what on earth the Quicken people are thinking.
3 stars (Not Worth the Cost) - Quicken 2006 Premier is not worth the cost if your are upgrading from the 2007 version. New features are nice but just not anything really impressive as with previous upgrades.