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Quicken 2005 for Mac [Old Version] | ![Quicken 2005 for Mac [Old Version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/516BP3CKPEL._SL160_.jpg) | From: Intuit
Category: Software
This item is no longer available
Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 5587
Format: CD-ROM
Platform: Mac
Media: CD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Operating System: Macintosh
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 8 x 1.8
MPN: 283646
Model: 283646
UPC: 028287009158
EAN: 0028287009158
ASIN: B00029J1QI
Release Date: July 30, 2004
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| Features:
| • | Save, invest, and track profits in minutes | | • | Download banking, credit card, and brokerage transactions | | • | Track spending; manage investments; prepare for tax time | | • | Track portfolio performance; read news stories related to holdings | | • | Track home inventory and value; convenient iCal calendar |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Quicken 2005 makes it easy to save, invest and track your profits in minutes -- while minimizing taxes, managing your investments and tracking your home inventory. Save, invest and track profits with tools that help you pay bills quickly, balance your checkbook, create a budget and more. Plan for retirement, simplify taxes and manage your investments - all with just a click! Stay informed with investment news flashes related specifically to your portfolio -- stock quotes, the Morningstar Rating for mutual funds and more
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
 Recommended for new or holdout users February 13, 2005
William Breiland
54 out of 55 found this review helpful
I would recommend this program to anyone who is considering a Mac-based personal finance program for the first time. It is far better than the two-star rating given by frustrated upgraders on this site would imply. I would also recommend it to some of the holdout Quicken users like me who do not want to repeatedly pay for the same bugs. However, without any significant competition, and the limited market share of the Macintosh, one must be prepared to suffer from limited support for this program. Were it not for this shortcoming, I would give this program 5 stars.
My history of Mac-based financial tracking programs goes all the way back to "Managing Your Money" by Andrew Tobias using a Mac LC in the early 1990's. This excellent program was edged out by a glitzier program, Quicken, which I converted to because it could track investments such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. It was the only program at the time that could accurately calculate the "internal rate of return" (IRR) on investments, which I believe is the only way to see how well that one is doing. I have stayed with Quicken through all its upgrades and find it to be an excellent way to track virtually all personal finances. It is far better than anything else that is currently available for the Mac. I have used this program with very few negative incidents at least every week for many years and find it invaluable for tracking checking & savings accounts, credit cards, salary, and investments including stocks, bonds, and retirement(401k, 403b, IRA) accounts.
Looking at the other reviews on this site, one may think that this program is pretty much of a dog. This is far from true; the poor reviews are from those that have an earlier version and are disappointed that the upgrade does not add enough new features to justify the cost of an annual upgrade. I cannot argue with this perception. The frustration is compounded when an upgrade is offered with known bugs not fixed.
The permanent bug problem in Quicken started in the late 1990's . My biggest personal disappointment was converting to Quicken 2002. All my hand-entered price information for investments was not transferred over to the new program! Prices of publicly-traded items could be downloaded, but this did not cover everything that I had. I lost many years of data. I believe that there is a great pent-up demand of existing Quicken users for a new version of Quicken with no new features, but a comprehensive list of all fixed bugs.
Examples of persistent bugs were the following: Opening a split transaction sometimes put the cursor one line away from the cursor on the screen. Some, but not all, multiple-item Portfolio displays always collapsed and had to be manually re-opened, which is not fatal, but is annoying. Every time one tried to memorize a customized report, the program crashed. This bug started in the transition from OS 9 to OS X. The program recovers without losing anything, but this does inspire confidence. As OS X was upgraded, several features that worked started to behave erratically. Notes in the calendar would jump to the dock whenever they were opened. The quick-math calculator jumped to the upper-left corner with only the bottom edge of the window visible.
I tried to report bugs to Intuit in the mid 1990's, but learned that it was not a productive activity. This experience is confirmed by postings from other frustrated users, an attitude that pervades most of the current reviews of Quicken 2005. I transitioned from someone who always bought the next update to one who updated only when I changed operating systems.
When I got my latest new Mac, it came with Quicken 2004. A quick check confirmed that all the above listed problems still persisted in the program, so I just whacked it and stayed with Quicken 2002.
A little over a month ago, I received a letter from Intuit informing me that it would no longer support download requests for the Quicken 2002 program. Needless to say, I did not greet this with any enthusiasm. However, the program is so essential to my life that I felt that I had to do something. A serious review of alternatives quickly revealed that Quicken, with all its frustrations, is still very much better than anything else on the market. I got the program and applied for the $30 rebate because I have also purchased TurboTax.
To my surprise, many of the bugs that have persisted through several Quicken upgrades have been fixed in Quicken 2005. The program imported all my price information and all but one of the bugs listed above have been fixed. The program still crashes whenever I try to memorize a custom report, but I rarely do this anymore. In any case, the bug is like so many of the other problems with Quicken: merely annoying, but not damaging. My data file size has ballooned up from 2.3 MB to 8 MB and some processes seem to take slightly longer, but not significantly so. I find this performance degradation disturbing because these calculations are not that complicated and my processor speed has increased by a factor of a hundred over the years. On balance, I am very satisfied with the newest version of the program. Note that I have not mentioned any of the new features of Quicken. I have not used any of these because they are mostly fluff. The best parts of Quicken were completed years ago. View Quicken as an excellent tool like a shovel. Do you really need a blinking light on the handle of a good shovel? The home inventory connection to iPhoto should be useful to some, and I plan to look at the improved tax planner, but I am not particularly hopeful.
Quicken is quite good December 11, 2004
Minding the Gap (Lansdowne, PA USA)
22 out of 28 found this review helpful
Overall, Quicken 2005 is an excellent financial management program. It is flexible and easy to use for a wide range of users, from folks who just want to keep an electronic version of their checkbook, to folks who want to manage all of their assets and liabilites in one place. Quicken is especially good for planning: It has excellent budgeting tools; a great utility for automatically recording future bills and deposits; and an incredibly useful feature called "Forecasting" that will tell you (if you have recorded your upcoming bills and deposits) what you account balance will be at the end of the next month, quarter, or year.
As nice add-ons, Intuit provides two separate programs accessible through Quicken: the Emergency Records Manager and the Home Inventory Manager. Both are quite useful in their own right. By including these programs, Intuit is suggesting that tracking such records is also an important part of your finanical health -- and they're right.
Quicken does it have its quirks, to be sure. Even after the release of Quicken 2005 Revision 2, the online registration system still doesn't work, which wouldn't be a bother except that Quicken periodically insists that you register on startup. (Fortunately, the dialog box is easily dismissed.) Quicken often forgets the location and size of your windows. And Quicken's default environment, set up with tabs representing "Activities" like Banking, Planning, Investing, etc. doesn't really work, at least for me. Thankfully, Quicken gives you excellent control over your work environment; I've set things up so that the Activities tab is hidden, and all of the things I do regularly are accessible through icons on the main toolbar.
A couple of caveats: I don't use Quicken's online banking facilities, as my bank (a small credit union) doesn't support them. I also don't use it for investing, as my investments are all in indexed funds, and I only look at my quarterly statements. For folks who are seriously interested in such things, other reviews are likely to be more informative.
I've tried many financial management programs for the Mac, and none comes close to matching Quicken on ease of use and power. As someone who is working hard to take better control of his finances and plan his financial future more carefully, I find Quicken indispensable.
Regarding "bad math" February 1, 2006
S. Koue (SF CA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Another customer had a problem with 10% on 10,000 for one year being more than 11,000. Quicken is not doing it wrong, they are compounding the interest, the way it should be done. There is nothing wrong with the financial calculators, you just not doing math the way financial institutions do.
Quicken 2005 for Mac August 2, 2005
R. Milburn (Wisconsin)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Just about what I expected. We have been using Quicken on Mac for many years and upgraded when we upgraded our operating system to Tiger. Everything works with no surprises so far.
Solid if Unexciting September 29, 2004
DW (NYC)
Recently I was forced to upgrade my Quicken 2000 to 2005 because Intuit decided to pull support for data download from financial institutions for the earlier version. While I have no doubt, as the other reviewers stated, that Quicken 2005 does not have all the bell and whistles that the PC version has, I've used it without any problems. The installation was clean and easy. My file, and trust me it was huge, converted beautifully. I might feel cheated if I had used the PC version, but it does everything I need it to do, and unfortunately, to my knowledge, it's the only game in town for personal financial software on the Mac. With any luck, someone else will design a better program and give Intuit a run for their money.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 40
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