Microsoft kills off Money

[Rik]

El Reg is reporting that MS is to abandon its personal finance package, Money. With Intuit having already abandoned Quicken, it seems to me that there's a gap in the market just waiting to be filled.

[MikeSh]

I have used Money for years and it works well for me - shame!
There are a few good looking shareware progs that are similar out there.

Mike

[Simon]

I've often wondered why they provide both Word and Works.

[Rik]

I suspect the former is there to entice someone into the full package.

[Rik]

I have used Money for years and it works well for me - shame!
There are a few good looking shareware progs that similar out there.

I'm still using Quicken 2002, Mike, it works and as long as it does, I don't need to change it.

[Ray]

El Reg is reporting that MS is to abandon its personal finance package, Money. With Intuit having already abandoned Quicken, it seems to me that there's a gap in the market just waiting to be filled.

I thought that was coming as they haven't had a new version for some time now, Rik, I moved to this when Quicken got dropped, suppose I'll have find something else now to keep track of my personal finances.    

[Rik]

Or just stay with it as long as it works, Ray. I stick with Quicken as I have a version on that on my PDA too.

[Ray]

Or just stay with it as long as it works, Ray. I stick with Quicken as I have a version on that on my PDA too.

I will, Rik, as long as it still works, I don't think there's anything else out there that comes close to Quicken or Money any way. 

[gizmo71]

I'm still using Money 2001. MS effectively abandoned the product in 2002 in the UK. One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to get all the data out and into my home SharePoint site.

[Rik]

I will, Rik, as long as it still works, I don't think there's anything else out there that comes close to Quicken or Money any way. 

That was my view when Intuit pulled out of the market, Ray. The only thing it doesn't have is proper mouse scrolling, I can get by with that.

[Ray]

That was my view when Intuit pulled out of the market, Ray. The only thing it doesn't have is proper mouse scrolling, I can get by with that.

I've still got Quicken 2002 on my machine, Rik, I kept it to still have access to my records prior to changing over to Money. Pity Quicken went I think it was probably the better product in it's day. 

[Rik]

Me too, Ray, so I didn't make the change plus, like you, I had years of records in it.

[JB]

I'm still using MS Money 2005 having used Quicken prior to that. I'll keep using it until it stops working or rather the operating system of the day won't run it. Does everything I need.

[Rik]

We seem to have all adopted the same strategy. When an OS does break the two programmes, we are going to be in big trouble.

[Ray]

We seem to have all adopted the same strategy. When an OS does break the two programmes, we are going to be in big trouble.

Well, Rik, at least 64bit Windows 7 doesn't break Quicken 2002 it runs fine in compatability mode. 

[Rik]

Good news, Ray.

[Ray]

Good news, Ray.

It is, Rik, must admit I was rather surprised that it still worked. 

[Rik]

I suppose it doesn't do anything really fancy, Ray.

[colirv]

Well, Rik, at least 64bit Windows 7 doesn't break Quicken 2002 it runs fine in compatability mode. 

That gives me hope. I'm running Quicken 2000 on Windows XP, and have been dreading the thought of losing it when I eventually go to Windows 7.

[Rik]

Here we are, a bunch of us using either Quicken or Money, and both software houses have dropped the programs. It makes you wonder why?

[Den]

I use Quickbooks Pro for my business accounts and it works fine for me, never fancied swopping to Sage. 

[colirv]

FWIW I've made a note of alternatives I've seen mentioned over the last year or so. I've not looked at them closely, but I've bookmarked Accountz, AceMoney and Moneydance for if and when push comes to shove.

[Rik]

Accountz looks promising, Colin, thanks.

[Niall]

I uninstalled Money a few weeks ago, and it seems to have taken a font or something with it. I get a strange symbol instead of a letter or icon, and I've no idea what is missing!

[Rik]

Where does it show up, Niall?

[Niall]

It's generally on webpages containing news stories. I can't really tell you anything less vague than that as I've seen it on the BBC site a few times and a couple of US news sites, along with random sites. Now I think about it, I haven't noticed it for a while so it could be one of the less common things used, like the upside down question mark thing (what ever the hell that is )

[Rik]

All I can suggest you do is have a look at the page source when you spot it and see what font is being called.

[Niall]

I was just thinking (whilst chasing my new kittens all over the damn place!) that it's possible that website weren't downloading correctly as it was happening during the period a week or so ago when people were complaining of issues.

I'll keep an eye out to see if I spot it again.

[Rik]

Always possible, Niall.

[Simon]

I uninstalled Money a few weeks ago, and it seems to have taken a font or something with it. I get a strange symbol instead of a letter or icon, and I've no idea what is missing!

I don't suppose it's changed the default Character Encoding, has it, Niall?  Mine is set to Western (ISO 8859-1), and it seems to display everything correctly, but change it, and I start getting silly symbols too.

[Niall]

The icon that appears in place of whatever letter or number, etc is a square box with numbers in it, or symbols (I can't remember off the top of my head).

[Simon]

It might not be it, but I'd check the character encoding in your browser.

[Rik]

Is that Firefox, Niall. It displays the hex code for the character if it's missing. On some sites, that's actually hard coded into the page.

[Niall]

http://www.wrexham.gov.uk/english/vacancies_en/vacancy.cfm?v_id=CA905D51-9715-08B1-D9C1C2487DBAD201&page=view

Here's an example. Just before the £8.05 per hour there's a little box with FF & FD under it.

Hmm on another page on that site, the ' is showing as that box too. Really weird this, I've never seen it until a few weeks ago.

[Simon]

Yup, this is what I see, Niall, and if I change the character encoding in the browser, I get different symbols, but none of them are correct (and I don't, and never have had Money installed).  Don't quite know how this helps, but at least it's not just you. 

[attachment deleted by admin]

[gizmo71]

The page source contains the bytes 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD and is encoded as UTF-8; this is Unicode 0xFFFD which is the 'replacement character'. This means that the page was generated from a source in which there where characters for which no suitable Unicode alternative was found - most likely a flaw in the translation process than actual unknown characters!

It's entirely possible - perhaps even likely - that the removal of MS Money and the appearance of these symbols is coincidence and not causation...

[Ray]

Yup, this is what I see, Niall, and if I change the character encoding in the browser, I get different symbols, but none of them are correct (and I don't, and never have had Money installed).  Don't quite know how this helps, but at least it's not just you. 

That's what I'm seeing as well, Simon, and I've still got Money installed so I suspect it's nothing to do with Money being uninstalled. 

[gizmo71]

In fact I've just noticed two conflicting META tags in the HTML source:

Code Select Expand

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />

So even if the correct characters were in the text (which they aren't) a browser has bugger all chance of actually knowing how to render it!

[Niall]

How strange. It's odd that it only recently started happening. Is it possible that a Windows update (possibly on the server side of the web host) has caused some errors on various websites?

I can't think of any other reason that would suddenly cause sites that I've previously had no problems with, displaying these weird things!

[Simon]

Is it just a small number of sites, Niall?  I'm just wondering if perhaps it's the sites themselves which have been updated in some way, perhaps to make them IE8 compatible, and now won't display properly?  Sorry, I can't see it mentioned in the thread, which browser are you using?  Have to say, I haven't come across it, apart from on the site you linked to.

[Niall]

I'm using Firefox. I don't come across it very often. I suppose it's possible that it's been this way for a long time, but I'd never spotted it on sites until now.

[Simon]

Either that, or some sites have been 'upgraded' for IE8, and it's screwed them for other browsers.  Just a guess, though.