I upgraded from the trial version which I downloaded. I will get the boxed
version this time. I would rather have the CD as backup than a downloaded
file.

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, BobE wrote:

- quote -

Get a boxed CD.

- quote -

Did you have a CD? If so, I am skeptical that you had to change the
date on your computer.

Well, unfortunatly I guess I will have to upgrade now. But based on
Jonathan's excellent review, sounds like 2006 is better than 04 & 05.
Hopefully my 5 years of data will convert without too much headache. Any
tips on that?

After recently upgrading my hard drive, in order to get 2003 installed, I
had to change the date on my computer to 2003, or else 2003 will not install.
Nice.

Bob

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Cal Learner-- MVP wrote:

- quote -

Correction. Yes, in Money 2003, that ability will expire.

In microsoft.public.money, BobE wrote:

- quote -

Not in Money 2003.

I am a current user of M2003 and not had any reason to upgrade so far. I
currently download my bank and credit card statements to Money on a monthly
basis but do not use any of the other on-line features. Is this one of the
features that will expire??

"Jonathan" wrote:

- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Jonathan wrote:

- quote -

Regarding Checking Plus, you can still go to the web site to get
your Checking Plus transactions via OFX.

Perhaps that is what you call "manually", but if so, what would you
call poking in the digits on the keyboard?

Of course I have even seen people call clicking UpdateNow-> Update
"manually". :-)

Windows XP SP2 on a Dell Latitude D600 notebook (Intel M 1.8mhz, 512mb
ram)

I was previously doing a mix of automatic downloads (american express,
at&t universal card and citibank mastercard), manual downloads
(citibank checking and money market, mbna card) and manual entry
(mostly investing and retirement accounts).

This wasn't awful, but having them almost all fully automated just
saves a lot of time and hassle.

I guess the argument for downloads vs completely manual entry depends
on how many accounts you have and how many transactions you perform. I
have 4 banking accounts, 6 credit card accounts, and 3 investment
accounts. Additionally I do about 1,100 individual transactions a year.
This is probably more than most people, and may be on account of my
living in Manhattan. If I was living a simpler life and had a lot less
transactions a week, the automatic part might be a lot less critical.

Without the automatic downloads, I wouldn't have made the switch, as
there are no new features that would be of benefit. 2003 was a solid
release, worked great with no hassles, no ads, and no bugs. Upgrading
will only give you a bunch of features you won't be using and a lot
more "partner" advertisements you cannot control.

On what version of Windows are you running Money06?

"Jonathan" <bartlettjonathan[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1122916267.584782.266030[at]g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -



----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups
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I am still on Money 2003 and I don't do downloads. I tried it several years
ago and it messed me up.

If you were not doing downloads, would you still have switched from 2003 to
2006? i.e. are the "other" improvements worth the upgrade?

Thanks,

Mark

"Jonathan" <bartlettjonathan[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1122916267.584782.266030[at]g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

I wrote a long article back in February detailing my experience
attempting to upgrade from 2003 to 2005. At the end of this experiment
I decided to completely roll back to 2003.

What I didn't take into account was that Microsoft had unknownlingly
locked me into the 2006 version by hiding a ticking timebomb in my
application. Knowing that my downloads were weeks away of coming to a
grinding halt, I had no other option.

As long as I was upgrading for good though, I decided to write my new
experiences for those of you interested.

---The Decisions---
My first task was to decide which option to buy (standard, deluxe, or
premium). The standard version made no sense at all... the discounted
price wasn't worth a reduced feature set and only a single year of
transaction downloads (you would have to upgrade next year and then the
price matches the deluxe price).

The real decision was between the deluxe version and the premium. The
deluxe was priced at $60 and the premium was $80. However there was a
$30 rebate offer on the premium bringing it down to $50 - cheaper than
the deluxe. I have heard that there are $20 rebates out there on the
deluxe, but that still only makes it $10 cheaper than the premium +
rebate.

Although the added feature set on the premium version is weak and
probably unnecessary, some of the add-ons aren't bad. For instance, the
free credit report alone is worth $15 (yeah, I know, you can mail for a
free one, but not worth the effort or time). And the added credit
monitoring for a year is also a nice perk.

In the end, I went with the extra $10 for the credit report, one year
monitoring, and weak extra features.

---The Upgrade---
Upgrading was not nearly as problematic as with 2005. The upgrade
happened very quickly... almost too quickly. I was sure something went
wrong. When I loaded my new "Home" screen it looked almost identical to
the previous one in 2003. All the settings and options in 2003 had been
ported over. I was very impressed. All of my accounts were there, and
generally I couldn't really find anything that was wrong (and I looked
hard).

---Transaction Downloads---
Obviously, this was the hardest part of the migration. My amex card,
which I was already receiving downloads for in 2003, worked great. But
the ones which I was downloading manually in 2003 were a pain. I am
happy to say that after hours of trial and error I was able to get
everything working 100%, but it was a rough ride.

Here are my suggestions for connecting an account which is not already
doing so (I did this with my MBNA Mastercard):

1. Click on "Banking"
2. Click on "Manage Online Services"
3. Click on the account name
4. Click on "Stop using online services"
5. Go back to "Manage Online Services"
6. Click on "Check for new online services"
7. Find your institution and go through the setup process

The one catch in this is that the process almost always failed out at
some point, usually after I indicated the bank and it downloaded that
banks info but before I gave it my login info. In this case, go back to
the "Manage Online Services" screen and click the "Continue Setting Up
Services" link next to that account. At this point you may see a
duplicate account with this link, and THAT is the one you want. Don't
let the duplication bother you at this point because once you are
finished setting it up it will ask you if you want to merge it back
into your original account, or you can do it manually.

---Citibank---
My problems with Citibank that I had in the 2005 upgrade continues. I
have a checking, checking plus (overdraft), money market and mastercard
account with them. The mastercard is what ended up being my culprit to
all my problems, as their credit cards are managed through their "Citi
Cards" brand and not through the main "Citibank" bank entry. If you
want to setup a citibank mastercard with other citibank accounts and
get all downloaded automatically, you need to put them under different
banks. You should:

1. Go to "Banking"
2. Go to "Manage Online Services"
3. Click on each citibank account and then click the "Stop using online
services" link to effectively end it for all your citibank accounts
4. Go back to "Manage online services"
5. Click on "Specify where accounts are held"
6. Move all of your citibank accounts to new bank(s). Make sure that
your citibank mastercard is listed under a separate bank from your
checking/money market accounts (which should all be together under one
bank). You can do this by right-clicking on each account and selecting
"Move". When you get the prompt, type in the new account name (for
checking/mma select the same account you just created for moving your
second/third accounts). You can call the new bank for all your
checking/mma "Citibank" and the one for your mastercard "citibank
mastercard". I also suggest setting up a third bank for investment
services, as there is no download for this and it can cause other
problems.
7. Setup online services separately for your checking/mma accounts with
Citibank and your mastercard with citi cards.

My only citibank complaint is that the checking plus still doesn't
work, and you have to manage it manually. This is more likely a
citibank or yodlee issue than a microsoft flaw, so I will resist
blaming them for now (although this did all work fine when I downloaded
manually using 2003, so the upgrade to something I didn't want to
upgrade to IS Microsoft's fault).

There is also no download for citibank investment services, but that is
pretty easy to handle manually since stock prices do come in on their
own.

Great news though... once this was all set up, it worked flawlessly.
Apparently all the issues of last year's version have been ironed out.
The whole process took me 3 or 4 hours to get working, but once it was
done it worked just dandy.

---My Favorites---
The real benefit I get out of 2005 is the "Bank Balance"
feature which I love, in which it tells you what the bank says your
balance is vs.
what you have it at in money, is very useful. However, and I saw one
user report something sounding like this, Citibank will update your
balance BEFORE the transactions come through. For instance, if I walk
over to the ATM right now and take out $100, and then come back to the
office and sync, citibanks balance will already reflect the -$100, but
the transaction won't be there so my money balance won't match it for
1-2 days when the transactions comes through. I actually don't mind
this at all and consider it a benefit... it used to be that I could
never really rely on the money balance for my checking account because
it didn't contain the last day or two of data.... but now the bank
balance will show me exactly where I am even if the money balance does
not.

---Overall 2005 Review---

The Pros:
1. I love the "Bank Balance" feature
2. The UI Is pleasant
3. I haven't had any of the performance problems other users have
complained about. The update is slow (several minutes) but I don't
really care as long as the UI is fast.

Wash:
3. There are some parts of the budgeting and cash flow changes that I
like better and worse... As has always been a problem (even in 2003),
it is hard to figure out exactly why Money comes up with some of the
calculations it does. Some time of cash flow report showing every
calculation for a period would be excellent!

The Cons:
4. Syncing setup was a pain, but that is over now.
6. I would like an option to determine which links are shown to
me...especially in relation to killing
"related links"
7. Too many ads! Ad links are just as bad as banners, in fact worse
since I don't realize what they are until I click on them!
9. Managing online services made my cons and fixed categories. It is
much better, but still needs work.
10. I still have a problem with it updating stocks I don't want it to,
but this is easily fixable by simply not telling it the ticker.

Fixed from 2005:
1.. Syncing - seems to work just fine now
processes keep running in the background).
2. Account duplication - haven't had it happen yet, except during setup
and it even asked me if it should merge them back together.
3. Money didn't mess too much with my categories, although there were
still a few changes I noticed (dining out and groceries not together
under food for example). Also there were a few categories back in there
that I deleted a long time ago. But overall it was much better.
4. Managing online services is better, although still highly comlicated
and confusing. They seemed to have gotten this a little better under
control, although there is still plenty of room for improvement.

In my 2005 review, I actually laid out what Microsoft could do to
voluntarily move to 2006. Clearly Microsoft has at least made some
progress. They were:
1. Fix the automation problems... especially with Citibank. This means
no duplicate accounts and no download errors. - FIXED
2. Stop messing with my categories. - FIXED
3. Get the online services setup process under control - FIXED
4. Stop updating stocks and funds that I don't mark for updates. -
UNDETERMINED
5. Get rid of all the link advertising or any links taking me out of -
NOT FIXED
the Money applications (including those to your MSN website). Or at
least make all of these links optional or configurable so I can choose
what I want to see. I can understand all this on a free website, but
when we are paying for it this is unacceptable.

---Conclusion---
There are still some issues to be worked out... but overall I don't
mind Money 2006. The UI is refreshing (although too many unconfigurable
links makes it overly confusing) and once you get the hang of what to
click on and what not it works just fine. A few of the new features I
even find really handy. And certainly the automatic downloads for the
accounts that weren't already doing so is a gigantic plus, as it will
save me time. Would I have upgraded if I hadn't been forced to...
probably not. Not because it isn't worth it, but more likely because
after 2005 I wouldn't have even tested it. However now that I am here I
am not complaining, and hope Microsoft continues making the
improvements that I have seen here.