- quote -

hahah... silly me. thanks for pointing that out.

- quote -

Thanks -- not considering 2005. I made the jump from 2002 to 2004 and
believe that there were a few nice tweaks to the way it handled downloaded
transactions (and matching), but there are still a lot of configuration
options and features I would love to see....

I'll be sure to check out the sites mentioned..
...dane

The wish address is in Glyn's signature:

- quote -

Some additional information can be found at
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=66.

The only way to tell what they are doing with your wishes (or any others) is
to look at the products they release. They do not provide any individualized
feedback on these wishes, nor tell us anything collective about what they
get wishes for. (To this extent, M05 indicates that maybe they get lots of
wishes for more advertising.) If you are considering M05, see
http://umpmfaq.info/Money2005.htm for one opinion. Read the NG for others.

"dane" <dane[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6FAA5F61-0E55-483C-AFE6-3FE2C8355B56[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

- quote -

Glyn,

How does one go about sending in a "wish" for Money feature(s)? And how
does one track any progress on such wishes?

Been a Money user since 2001, and saw a good improvement from 2002 to
2004, but there are still quirks and features that seem like obvious needs
(to me) that are still missing... (no, haven't tried 2005 yet)

thanks,
...dane

I don;t think you can on the 'favorite' categories. These are something
which have been added which are independent of the type of budget (i see
them, even though i use an advanced budget). Its something i have thought
about, but there doesn't appear to be a setting. Make sure you send in a
wish..

--
Glyn Simpson, Microsoft MVP - Money
http://money.mvps.org

Check http://support.microsoft.com/default...d=fh;EN-GB;mny
for UK tips and fixes for MS Money. To send Microsoft your wishes or
suggestions, use http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
or http://www.microsoft.com/uk/support/money/feedback especially
if it's a UK specific wish.

I do not respond to any unsolicited email regarding Money

"Brian Vallelunga" <brian[at]vallelunga.com.no_spam> wrote in message
news:%23ULNQyRpEHA.800[at]TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Ross.lieberman[at]echostar.com wrote:
- quote -



I think you can do more than three categories. Isn't that the difference
between simple budget and the more advanced one? Check out the budget
video and see if that explains it better.

Brian

Ross.lieberman[at]echostar.com wrote:
- quote -

Ross,

It is my understanding that MS has indeed incoporated the features you
describe into M05. In fact, this is how they are now able to advertise
supporting more FI's than in the past. Many of those that don't
support MS Money are able to be setup within Money using the new Yodlee
engine incorporated into this version. One caveat though; in order to
utilize this feature you must use a .NET Passport and be logged in with
it when setting up these accounts within Money.

Regards,
JB

Thanks for the comparison.

Question for you: Could you tell me more about Yodlee. I've gone to their
website but have some trouble understanding exactly what they offer. I am
interested in "scrapes" of FI's not supported by Microsoft Money. Can you
download a scrape into MM? What does it cost?

thx


<Ross.lieberman[at]echostar.com> wrote in message
news:1096301770.543867.42880[at]k17g2000odb.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Since 1998, I've been a Microsoft Money user. Over the years, I've
upgraded my version a few times. However for the last two years, I've
used MS Money 2003 Deluxe. I decided to pass on MS Money 2004, and I
purchased Money 2005 Premium on Friday.

For the last couple of months, I was curious about the new features of
the product, and read these news groups for some clues. So now that
I've used the product myself, I figure that I'll pass along my
thoughts:

MS Money 2005 is only slighly better than MS Money 2003. In earnest, I
found very few differences between the two programs. The home page
provides mostly the same information. The tabs on top were also the
same: Accounts, Bills, Portfolio, etc. The general interface has not
changed at all.

However there were some new features that I liked, and some features
that they have not improved upon which was disappointing. Keep in mind
that some of these updates may have been done in the 2004 version. I
recognize this. Here are my two bis:

1) The best improvement in the product is the ability to track up to
three specific budget categories for overages. This appears on the
home page. For me there are plenty of budget categories that stay the
same each month (i.e. rent, cable, etc.), but there are those that
change (i.e. food: groceries, food: dining out, etc.). Being able to
easily track these categories is a benefit. However, why did Microsoft
limit the number of categories to 3? Hopefully in 2006, MS will allow
users to track an unlimited number?

2) I think that the ability to use MS Money 2005 online is good. It is
a great improvement over the www.moneycentral.com feature in MS Money
2003 which never really worked. The new feature appears to give you
better access to your accounts. HOWEVER, in the overall scope of
things, this feature is not that useful. I use yodlee.com to access my
accounts online, and that yodlee website is so great that I cannot see
myself using moneycentral online. The yodlee.com website can give you
the most updated information on your accounts. Yodlee.com also has
access to more accounts. [I discuss this issue below in greater
deatil].

**** ALERT: I had problems updating from Money 2003 to 2005. Two
years ago, I tried using the moneycentral functionality with 2003. I
quickly realized that moneycentral was not that great, and abandoned
the accounts online. When I booted Money 2005 for the first time, the
program synced with moneycentral, and uploaded old account information
from moneycentral into Money 2005. It was a problem because these old
accounts had the same names as some of my current accounts. I was
nervious erasing these old accounts because I didn't want to accidently
erase my current accounts.

3) PROBLEM: After upgrading from 2003 to 2005, I found that a lot of my
investment accounts were no longer balanced. It seems that all of my
sales were being recorded as expenses. The cash accounts for these
investment accounts now had huge negative balances. Here was my
solution: I went to each of the sale transactions on the investment
account, and I toggled the "transfer to" account from the correct cash
account to a different cash account and then back to the correct cash
account. This fixed the problem. However it took about an hour to
fix, and was frustrating.

4) I've read about people complaining about the speed of Money 2005. I
find the program to be no slower or faster than 2003.

5) Here's something that's frustrating. Www.yodlee.com is able to
scrub a user's financial websites and pull off information. I don't
understand why MS Money can't use the same technology to pull
information from banks and investment houses that are not compatible
with MS Money, but still have online services. Microsoft says they
incorporate yodlee in their product, but obviously they are not using
some of yodlee's best features. It's really fustrating to have to do
any type of manual input into the program.

6) Lastly, this is not a knock on 2005 Premium, but on the these types
of programs in general. The planning functions are rather simplistic,
and cannot take into account the specifics that a user needs to make
the planner useful for one's own case. For instance with the budget
planner, it's really annoying that the program will disribute over
twelve months a one-time expected expense or receipt. This just throws
off the entire budget. The long term planner is absolutely ridiculous
because no one can make these kind of assumptions thirty years into the
future.

7) On a postive note, the program seems to do a better job at the
investment performance chart (this is found on the monthly reports
page). In the 2003 version, the chart was never accurate. At least
for my accounts.

Again overall, I found the 2005 Premium program to be almost identical
to the 2003 Deluxe program. The program has no new programs. It only
carries over some of the old ones. However, as an avid user of MS
Money. I thought it was worth the money. In fact, I purchased it from
Microsoft, and here's the deal I got. It cost me about $85 (tax and
shipping included), but I got the $30 rebate from MS, and a $9.99 from
Money magazine. If you read the fine print, you can get a rebate
instead of actually subscribing. I also got $10 off my next Microsoft
purchase as long as it's before November 30, 2004.
If anyone has questions, or comments, I check for replies.