Quicken XG allows you to take complete control of your finances. You can record and track all your personal and business accounts as well as investments. Data can be graphed and reported against for clear and helpful analysis. Intuit include several useful extras including a Home Inventory program, the ability to backup your data online for complete security and tools to assist with your end-of-year tax affairs.

If you are new to Quicken, you'll appreciate the new Guided Setup Wizard that walks you through the setting up of all your accounts. These can be current accounts, savings, credit cards or investments. You can also choose the types of tasks you intend doing with Quicken such as tracking investments, planning for retirement, controlling business finances and many more. Of course, you can always add new accounts or features later as your needs grow.

Quicken XG supports online banking and investment updating although the range of supported institutions is limited to those who specifically support Quicken. However, most of the big ones except Barclays are supported, with Barclays due soon. Usefully, you can set up automatic downloads to ensure Quicken XG always has the most up to date information.

As well as the use of Quicken XG itself and the online services for 12 months, you also get three free consultations with a Quicken financial expert who can help set the program up or advise on how to achieve certain goals.

With so much flexibility and power, it is good news that the built in help is particularly well designed. The information is presented in both general and task-specific formats, making it a breeze to get to the information you need.

Quicken XG provides a fresh new look for existing users as well as many improvements to its general functionality and tweaks to the analysis tools. New users will appreciate the Guided Setup Wizard which is a huge help when starting from scratch. --Iain Laskey

I have used Quicken for 11 years now, and I can safely say this is the worst release ever! Graph functionality has been removed, the interface is counter-intuitive and clumsy, and "online banking interface" means diddly-squat!


Microsoft Money for me!!!!!!   March 3, 2004
 65 out of 65 found this review helpful

Some words of warning; if you use Quicken 2001 or earlier, DO NOT upgrade to Quicken XG. Apart from the problems with registration, only being allowed to install the product on one PC, the features that obviously don't work and the non-exsistant support from Quicken themselves, this product also conflicts with any Norton firewall - Quicken will work, but your firewall won't any longer.

Forget it, use Money instead.

A question for Amazon: Why do I have to rate this product with at least one star on a scale of one to five? I would prefer to give it no stars.


Don't buy it!   February 24, 2004
 45 out of 45 found this review helpful

I am returning to MS Money! Trying to get support from Intuit for this product is impossible. They just do not reply to any e-mail or to any "critical" articles posted on the user's forum. Beware also of the claims about which financial institutions will support thtis product in the future. I contacted Halifax who said they have no plans to support Quicken XG within their online banking product...


Frustrated with Quicken XG   February 21, 2004
 54 out of 54 found this review helpful

Having used Quicken for several years through various upgrades,I feel this version is the worst yet. The registration is a nightmare if you have to reinstall for any reason.
I returned to an old version, Quicken 2000 in desperation but even that is better than XG.
I am using Microsoft Money 2004 now and find this is much better so will be sticking with it until Quicken get their act together and give a better product for their loyal customers.


Don't buy unless you never leave home   February 21, 2004
 25 out of 25 found this review helpful

This version does NOT allow you to install on your laptop. Their helpful advice was 'uninstall from the PC and install on the laptop then do the opposite'.

To add insult to injuy they have changed their encryption so you cannot download fron NatWest (in my case) unless you leave your whole file with them for 2 WEEKS!