I really do love my Air.

Over the last few weeks, I've been slowly moving data and software over. I love iPhoto. I don't know how I existed without Spaces. I bought Coda for web design (best website development tool ever, if you're a PHP/HTML/Smarty person).

Everything was going great, until last night.

When I tried to install Quicken.

I owned Quicken 2006 for Windows. I read the website, and it told me that the data couldn't all be moved to the Mac version. This did not make me happy, but I've had the same Quicken data file since my first copy of Quicken, and it's littered with old accounts I don't have anymore, and maybe it was time to start over anyway. So I spent the $60 to buy Quicken 2007 for the Mac. It crashed 3 times last night (and nothing else on the Mac has crashed at all). There's a dialog box that pops up every time you close a report, asking you if you want to save. It has one button: "OK". I guess it's just tough if you don't want to save it. And like most of it's other dialog boxes, it has a "Don't show me again" checkbox, which can't be checked. You click it, it checks, and by the time you move the mouse off, it's unchecked again.

"Unusable" is the best I can come up with to describe it. I was so annoyed I actually sent email to Intuit. I believe that last night I may have bought my last Intuit product ever - they've has really gone downhill the last few years.

So, what am I going to replace it with? For a local install, the option seems to be Gnu Cash. I loved accounting in college, but it is way overkill for what I need. Online, there are a few options: Wesabe (no, I don't want to mix social networking with my finances, thank you!), Mint (free, no option to pay, but you have to put up with horribly annoying ads), and Yodlee (eh. It's okay, just not all that impressive).

I'm going to try Mvelopes. I was wary of online systems, but I find it difficult to justify that once I accept that every bank/investment account I have has a web interface. The other problem is that it's reasonably expensive - $100 a year. The upside is that it does exactly what I always wanted Quicken to do (and it never could) - budget with envelopes. I always hated the way Quicken budgets worked - if I spend $100 every winter month on electric, but $300 in the summer, I want to be able to budget that as $150 a month and know how much is in the 'envelope' at any given time.

They have a two month free trial, so I'm going to give them a shot. Not today, of course, because on top of everything else, Quicken locked me out of my online access to my checking accounts, and I have to wait until Wells Fargo sends me a _letter_ with my new pin in it!

Tags: mac, money
Current Mood: aggravated