Why Upgrade

Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now know
all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
to relearn all!

R
Wed Aug 02 08:25:35 CDT 2006

Good question. My answer is don't upgrade. I still use Money 2002 because
it works fine and I cannot find any reason to upgrade after testing all the
newer versions except 2007 which I don't intend to test after reading posts
about 2007 here. I even rejected 2003 because it changed the budget report
logic which destroyed my budgets.

I have been monitoring this list for about a year and I have not seen a
single post offering a reason to upgrade beyond 2002 so I cannot explain why
some users are still buying new versions every year. My best guess is that
they are using downloading features that automatically expire so they buy
new versions in order to retain those features. To me the automatic
expiration of downloading features is a reason never to buy a new version
but I guess many users are "trapped" in the upgrade cycle because they
cannot convert their data from newer versions back to older versions. MSFT
craftily changes file formats so they are not backward compatible and they
provide no import tool to allow older versions to import data from newer
versions.

If MSFT actually upgraded the software to make it substantively better for
personal finance work, I would gladly buy new versions every year. The fact
is that new versions subsequent to 2002 do not make substantive
improvements. They change the interface for no good reason, add useless
fluff, dumb down the program and fail to correct bugs and other problems.

Regards

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ




"Jill" <Jill@usa.net> wrote in message
news:1rvvu487tjqj6$.474906qb1l30$.dlg@40tude.net...
> Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now
> know
> all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
> to relearn all!

Ron
Wed Aug 02 09:48:40 CDT 2006

On Wed, 2 Aug 2006 07:56:53 -0500, Jill <Jill@usa.net> wrote:

>Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now know
>all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
>to relearn all!

I had 2003 and upgraded to 2007.

The ONLY reason I upgraded is because I need to be able to download internet
related information in order to work efficiently. I could have duplicated the
stock portfolio tracking in Excel, but it would have been a lot of work to
integrate things back with Money.

The ONLY advantage (obviously limited to features I use) I've noted is that the
Investment Performance reports seem to exclude holdings that are not held, nor
have any activity, during the time period of the report. This disappeared for
me after M1999 and, as far as I know, this is the first time this feature has
again been present.

The program has introduced a new conflict which I am trying to work out with
Money support (although I have not heard anything from them since their last
acknowledgement of 27 Jul). With a normal boot process, after receiving an
acknowledgement of an EPAY, M2007 will crash (...error and has to shutdown...
Message). With all of my startup programs disabled, that function seems to
work. So I've been adding them back from time to time as I get EPAY's to be
made.

There were also other crashes that seem to have been fixed by level 1 and level
2 repairs, BILLs deletions, and setting to use a browser external to the Money
program. I'm not sure which fixed what.

On some pages, there are now popup advertisements that I can't seem to get rid
of.

I had not had a crash with M2003 in months.
--ron

Dick
Wed Aug 02 10:29:20 CDT 2006

I don't think you need to worry about relearning all just yet--indeed, the
longer you go the header this issue gets--just the bugs/quirks. M07 is not
that much different, beyond cosmetics, than M06 or M05 or M04 or M03 or M02.
More ads, mostly. Oh, and some more screen clutter and less screen to use
and the Essential modes which most smart and experienced users like yourself
just ignore.

I upgraded from Mv2 through M04, skipping only M98. I'm just now gearing up
to upgrade from M04 to M07. My issues with M05 and M06 are captured at
http://umpmfaq.info/Money2005.htm and http://umpmfaq.info/Money2006.htm. I
cannot recommend either of those as an upgrade from M03 and am not a huge
fan of M07.

I'm upgrading now more for reasons of continued supportability than for any
feature in M07 vs. M04. Indeed, with hours to think about it, I might come
up with one or two feature differences that I value, but not enough to
justify the change by themselves. One feature of M07, I call it
nuke-the-bills and others call "Bills Be Gone", has enabled--with a major
investment of time on my part--my file to have vastly improved performance
and stability on M07 than it did on M06. Since my file is stable and
performs marginally acceptably on M04--and was an unstable dog on M06--I
can't say as I'd necessarily expect much going from M03 to M07 and going
through the pain/effort of nuke-the-bills.

General issues with NOT upgrading are noted at
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=174.

"Jill" <Jill@usa.net> wrote in message
news:1rvvu487tjqj6$.474906qb1l30$.dlg@40tude.net...
> Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now
know
> all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
> to relearn all!

Cal
Wed Aug 02 10:34:55 CDT 2006

In microsoft.public.money, Ron Rosenfeld wrote:

>
>
>The ONLY advantage (obviously limited to features I use) I've noted is that the
>Investment Performance reports seem to exclude holdings that are not held, nor
>have any activity, during the time period of the report. This disappeared for
>me after M1999 and, as far as I know, this is the first time this feature has
>again been present.

Why would you not use the automated multiple backup feature?

Ron
Wed Aug 02 12:05:51 CDT 2006

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 10:34:55 -0500, Cal Learner-- MVP
<via_newsgroup@please.tnx> wrote:

>In microsoft.public.money, Ron Rosenfeld wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>The ONLY advantage (obviously limited to features I use) I've noted is that the
>>Investment Performance reports seem to exclude holdings that are not held, nor
>>have any activity, during the time period of the report. This disappeared for
>>me after M1999 and, as far as I know, this is the first time this feature has
>>again been present.
>
>Why would you not use the automated multiple backup feature?

I put that into the category of a feature I use because it is there, but not
one that would cause me to update. Under 2003, I would sequentially number my
backups.


--ron

Ben
Thu Aug 03 00:56:01 CDT 2006

Backup your file, download the trial version, decide for yourself -- that's
what trial versions are for.

Jill <Jill@usa.net> wrote:
>Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now know
>all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
>to relearn all!

R
Thu Aug 03 16:37:19 CDT 2006

Well, it's not that easy.

Unless your finances are pretty basic, a proper trial takes a couple months,
more is better. During that time you must run the old version and the new
version in tandem which means downloading or otherwise entering all data in
both programs. If you fail to keep your data entry up to date in the old
version and eventually decide not to upgrade you are in for a ton of work
because you cannot easily import data from the new version into the old
version (in fact it might be impossible, don't know).

I have done a full scale side-by-side test of Money 2002 and Moneydance
which lasted for about 4 months and shorter tandem tests with various newer
versions of Money. It is a lot of work. Accordingly, I am not testing
anymore candidates for replacement of Money 2002 unless the chances that I
will upgrade are fairly good.

I have already read enough about M2007 to convince me that I would not
consider switching off M2002 for M2007 so a trial would be a complete waste
of my time. I think its the same for most folks. If they do not see clear
evidence of substantive improvements in the program, why download a trial
and go through all that work.

We all keep hoping that MSFT is going to make the program better and all
their hype about massive improvements every year sounds good but when you
actually dig into the new program all you really find is more glitz, no
beef.


Regards

Bill Wood





"Ben" <benjimen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:part1of1.1.BqX6kspzPKa6Bw@ue.ph...
> Backup your file, download the trial version, decide for yourself --
> that's
> what trial versions are for.
>
> Jill <Jill@usa.net> wrote:
>>Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now
>>know
>>all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
>>to relearn all!
>

Chris
Thu Aug 03 21:54:14 CDT 2006

And some banks make it hard to revert to previous versions, if you're
downloading data.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL



"William R Wood" <secret@???.net> wrote in message
news:e19ZFU0tGHA.3568@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Well, it's not that easy.
>
> Unless your finances are pretty basic, a proper trial takes a couple
> months, more is better. During that time you must run the old version
> and the new version in tandem which means downloading or otherwise
> entering all data in both programs.

John
Sun Aug 06 18:10:19 CDT 2006

I have v2003 and downloaded v2007 trial and to my surprise I found
practically no difference. I wonder if there are any MS Money programmers
working on the product because the only difference appears to be the UI and
more ads. I can't believe consumers stand for that, but then again I'm sure
Quicken also runs ads in their software.



"Jill" <Jill@usa.net> wrote in message
news:1rvvu487tjqj6$.474906qb1l30$.dlg@40tude.net...
> Why upgrade? I upgraded ever year till V2003. It works fine. And I now
> know
> all of its dirty little secrets. I'm afraid to upgrade and then be forced
> to relearn all!