Review by Brian Kelly

I have been using Quicken for ten-plus years and have seen it slowing decline in quality and customer service over that time, but with no viable choice out there, I keep purchasing the forced upgrades every few years as Intuit requires (for those who don’t already know–Intuit puts a kill bit in your software so that after three years many of the features stop working, so you have to buy a new version).

The best thing I can say about Quicken 2012 is that it is not much worse than Quicken 2011. In fact, there is little apparent difference at all in terms of functionality, other than two annoyances:nn1. If you leave Quicken running overnight, as soon as you focus on the Quicken window the next day, it announces that it needs to restart itself and immediately does so (whether you like it or not). It has apparently lost its ability to refresh various dates while the application is running.

2. It is even slower than 2011.

All in all, you get no noticable new features and two annoyances, so I don’t know why anyone using Quicken 2011 should bother upgrading.

Ah–one improvement: Intuit has reduced the unwanted icons it drops on your desktop advertising its various services and partners from dozens to only one!