Timothy C. Hain, MD

Professor of Neurology, Otolaryngology, and Physical Therapy/Human Movement Science, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago IL, USA.

EMAIL ADDRESS: t-hain@northwestern.edu

This space holds helpful information about software and hardware and vendors that Dr. Hain has discovered by trial and error. Perhaps if enough of us do this, searches on these devices or companies will bring up more relevant information.

Main Rants/Raves page

Microsoft Money Essentials -- garbage software

Another sad story -- misled this time by one of the biggest companies in the world. After using Microsoft Money 2004 for about 2 years, I started getting this threatening notice from Microsoft -- that they were going to stop allowing my purchased program to interact with bank sites and download data. This came as a surprise to me -- I had assumed that when I paid for my Microsoft Money 2004 program, I actually owned it. I did not realize that Microsoft could destroy the function of an already purchased program. When I buy a car, the car dealer doesn't put a time-bomb into the car to blow it up after 5 years (although perhaps they would like to do this - -think of all the repeat sales !). Similarly, it never occured to me that Microsoft would purposefully destroy the function of a program that they sold to me.

Well, how naive I was. So, I looked at the alternatives -- other than Quicken, they were all pretty awful. Amazingly awful, considering that these are just glorified spreadsheets. The only things that looked halfway usable run on Liunix. I didn't want to switch to Quicken, as they do the same thing as Microsoft.

So, I plunked down $19.00 and downloaded Microsoft Essentials. To my great surprise, this program is INCOMPATABLE with Microsoft Money -- it doesn't even import Money format files !

On looking online, I discovered that others had already commented on the woefully poor usability of this pitiful microsoft program http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1999206,00.asp

Please -- someone -- interface Excel so that it can download ofx files from banks -- it can't be all that difficult. Sell your widget and the world will beat a path to your doorstep.