Intuit's Crippleware Crusade--Again!

[MarkTwain]

Intuit has launched yet another Crippleware Crusade, subjecting users (like myself) to forced upgrades from Quicken 2004 to Quicken 2007. Basically, if you don't upgrade to the 2007 version by April 30, 2007, Intuit will cripple your 2004 version's ability to download financial data, stock quotes and online bill payment, etc.

While this caper may be legal, it is downright unethical and sleazy.

Any other Quicken users up for a boycott, if not a class-action suit, to curb this kind of
corporate cynical manipulation?

[cmillar6]

I dumped Quicken 2 years ago for this exact reason and switched to Microsoft Money. Guess what? Microsoft Money forces you to upgrade every 2 years and they force you to by disabling online banking just like Quicken. I had to pay $39.95 for Money 2007 to keep all of my online banking features. I am red in the face with anger over this, its not the $39.95, its the fact I paid money for software and they automatically break it after 2 years just to force you to upgrade. And software vendors wonder why piracy is rampant, the vendors are crooks themselves.

[MarkTwain]

I didn't know that about MS Money--so they are on the same sleazo bandwagon, too!

It's a shame that MoneyDance doesn't have better investment-management features.

Otherwise, I'd jump to them ASAP!

[glc]

I don't think you have any grounds to complain - if you don't pay a yearly subscription fee, you can't download updates for any commercial security applications. They are simply doing the same thing - the program will work forever but you can't use their online *SERVICES*. 40 bucks every 2 years is very reasonable for a competent home financial package.

[cmillar6]

when you pay a subscription fee for security applications you are paying for weekly updated virus definitions. In this case they are taking perfectly good software and crippling a feature they know users can't live without to force an upgrade. If my memory serves me correctly Intuit got into some hot water about this a few years ago, they wrote an article about it in Maximum PC, I'll see if I can dig it up tomorrow. Reading that article made me switch to Microsoft Money and now they pull the same stunt.

[glc]

You are still using a service. All they are doing is time-limiting the service when you make a single payment. You are going to find more and more of this, not less - software by subscription is happening, whether you like it or not.

[EzyStvy]

Odds are that the download info has to be prepared for the different versions of the software. If so, it's time consuming and expensive for them to support many versions...