Crossover Gets Quicken 252
Jeremy White writes: "involved with the Wine project 4 years ago, a major personal goal
for me was to switch my wife's computer to Linux. But there was
a simple caveat: "No Quicken, No Linux." As of today,
CrossOver Office now supports Quicken (and my wife was
beta tester #1 *grin*). The new version, 1.2.0, also supports
Visio and fixes a raft of bugs. The press release is
at Codeweavers
and a review can be found
here.
" I've got a similar situation - been running Quicken for the last ten years, and have only one data section lost, so this is pretty darn cool. And it freakin' works.
Standard Wine? (Score:2, Interesting)
I know Codeweavers have been good about feeding fixes back into the mainline project (unlike WineX), and I hope they keep it up.
Slightly OT: GnuCash (Score:4, Interesting)
Focus on Linux apps (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's nice. (Score:2, Interesting)
In my opinion, the features of Quicken far outweigh its shortcomings. With a bank and brokerage that support online updating, I can download and reconcile all transactions without having to do a cumbersome, and flakey, file import. I pay bills by entering them in the register, then clicking 'online update'. Its investment tracking tools are unsurpassed. It tracks everything from mortgage interest to capital gains to IRA contributions to tell me where I stand with the government at any moment. gnuCash is coming along, but it's closer to managing your finances with a spreadsheet than the features Quicken and Money have. With a little finagling, I've managed to turn off all the ads, and I've never given any information to Intuit's website.
And don't get me started on using Quicken and Turbo Tax in April.
Re:Focus on Linux apps (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this is especially useful when it comes time to expand. When an office suddenly needs two PCs, the logical step is a network. Maybe even a server. That's where sticker shock for a Win2k network kicks in, and where the free (beer) side of Linux can be a huge blessing. Without Quickbooks, moving away from Windows will be painful (espcially since the last time I checked, you can't export your data from Quickbooks).
Re:That's nice. (Score:4, Interesting)
- Under the 'General' tab of quicken options, select "Hide advertisements in online financial center"
- Under the 'Startup' tab, select 'none'
- Customize the 'My Finances' page to remove the alerts box. This feature does nothing for me, anyway.
- Right-click the alert bar at the bottom and select the option that removes the alert bar.
- Remove all Quicken items from Windows' Start folder.
That's all I remember. Like I said, it took some doing, but I don't remember seeing an ad since January.Other "critical" applications? (Score:4, Interesting)
What other must-have "mission critical" applications does WINE fully support, or will support soon? Long-term Linux users sometimes avoid tasks or fileformats that are only served by certain applications. New adoptees need a transition plan that includes their favorite applications.
Here are a few I could think of, but I expect there are others.
(I know that there's Linux programs that are almost as nice, or even in some cases better. The Windows ports and additional tools that accompany the free "PanoTools" are far superior to the available Linux/GIMP integration at this point, for example. This is about transitioning people who are lost without some familiar applications.)
Quicken is Spyware (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no obvious way to disable this. There is an option hidden away in the configuration to "disable background downloading", but you cannot select it! You have to use a "secret key combo" that Intuit's tech support gives out over the phone - "SHIFT-4-CLICK" - in order to select this option.
But here's the kicker - the next time you run Quicken it re-enables this "background downloading" again! If you remove this DLL from the Windows registry, Quicken adds it again the next time you run it.
Intuit says these DLLs are harmless programs that "keep your software up to date and bug free", but the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove, and so difficult to detect, makes me wonder what this is REALLY doing.. and I'm not being paranoid, just curious. It's my computer, not theirs!!
Because it's closed source, we'll never know what it's doing.
I have not seen much talk about this on usenet, etc. Adaware does not catch it.
Look here here [google.com] for some google hits on the topic. I have not found a thread where someone else has noticed that the SHIFT-4-CLICK method is only *temporary*, and that it comes back again later behind your back..
Anyway, just wanted to rant about this. I find it disturbing that my (former) financial software has such a great need to send stuff in the background without my permission!
Submitter of the story also is CEO of Code Weavers (Score:2, Interesting)
No wonder why the post makes no references to free or open source software that may suit the more or less same needs.
In such cases, I think moderators should maybe not quote word for word the text submitted, but should put the story submitted into some perspective, and add some information.
Run as root? (Score:3, Interesting)
OK, so it runs. Does it require you to run it as root? Quicken on 2000 must be run as Administrator*; try to run it as a non-privileged user and it fails. I'm a sysadmin, and had to install Quicken for the department (bitch-)secretary(-from-hell), and it flat-out refused to run as anything less than a local admin. I called Intuit (not made easier by the fact that they hide their phone number, encouraging you to use their useless website instead), and finally found a tech with a clue (about the fourth person to whom I spoke). He confirmed for me that you do, in fact, have to run it as admin, and that there's no way around it.* I had to give the secretary (also an incredible dolt, and very protective of "her" machine) local admin, which she has used to install unauthorized software, disjoin herself from the domain (woo-hoo! I only support our domain--she's fucked, particularly for backups), etc. That one poorly-designed program has opened me up to all sorts of trouble. In any case, I swore that day that I'd never use an Intuit product for any purpose, and I'd make sure others are aware of their boneheaded design. Use it at your own risk.
*I'm told there's another method to get it running as a non-privileged user, that being to specifically grant write-access to all the directories that the program uses, but I haven't been able to try it, because of the aforementioned secretary's protective attitude (don't touch my computer!), and since she has disjoined, I don't care anymore anyway.
Re:Quicken is Spyware (Score:3, Interesting)
They worked with us to properly address this, and their development manager (who seemed to have a clue) was very adamant in making sure that no one in the security community would explode, such as putting information screens when you installed and upgraded the program.
We really pushed hard for them to include a "Never contact the Internet, ever!" select button, and they assured us that they would do it.
At some point, they just stopped sending us status reports. I figured that the development manager just left or was canned.
<SARCASM>It's nice to see that the development team was able to keep the marketroids at bay...</SARCASM>
Too bad for them. We were doing this on a volunteer basis.