One bug: Money will pull account data from a popular online brokerage, then five minutes later the data will be gone from the UI, even if you force Money to reconnect to the online brokerage.

Another issue: your regular username and password that you use to access an account online, fequently will NOT work with Money. So you need to call each financial institution individually to get connect. Since this is something that few financial institutions deal with on a regular basis, their regular customer support cannot help you and you need to call during special times of the day.

Calling Microsoft Money technical support puts you into India. How would you feel about discussing your personal financial account data with someone in India, where security laws are much more lax compared to the US?

More on security: can you trust Microsoft Money to be without security flaws given all the recent IE issues?

The user interface is incredibly complex and unintuitive. The issue is that all features are thrown at the user at once, rather than being phased-in. There is a deluge of options to scan through. Of course, none of these features work since we can't get basic account info.

"Frustrating and poorly designed"
I have been using checkbook software for over fifteen years, starting with the Mac and Quicken, moving on to various versions of Quicken on the PC. I switched to Money from Quicken at the turn of the year for three reasons: frustration with Quickens bloating features and pop-ups (too much getting in the way), Intuit's policies with Turbo Tax (a protest), and Quicken BillPays interfaces and clunky operation.

Big mistake. Money 2004 was even worse.

I download my statements from my bank using a web and .qif file interface. Money is abysmal at this - it makes almost random matches, it tries to match electronic downloads with DIFFERENT amounts, it does not read or use the information in the .qif file such as payee, and more. It makes more work trying to clean it up than it saves. Not using the data in the .qif file (like payee name) is TOTALLY INEXCUSABLE.

Reconciling is also tons of fun. Reconciling is an important task, since Money's statement download is so prone to errors. First, it tries to clear everything Ihave downloaded for me - have to go through and manually unreconcile everything then start over.

The Help file does not appear to be written for this version of Money - the information just does not match what I see on the screen.

The Payee list gets unweildy and there is no efficient way to prune it - deleting payees you have used only once more than a year ago, for instance.

The list goes on. In a nutshell, Microsoft has ignored the basics of good design needed to maintaining a number of accounts in favor of useless features, strange sound effects and confusing glitz.

I am looking for a replacement ....

"Isn't this amazing"
So you're wondering whether to buy MS Money or Quicken. So you look at this page and read the reviews that say this is the worst piece of software ever written and how they wished they'd bought Quicken. The you go to the Quicken reviews, and surprise surprise, you read essentially the same nonsense from people wishing they'd bought Money. Now, I'm willing to accept there may be some preference, but both pieces of software were given 5-stars by PC Magazine. They said there's little difference between the two, and that both do an good job. I think what we're seeing here is a battle between the software Talaban, not real reviews, similar to the fight between those who swear by PC vs. those who swear by Macs. I've used both Quicken and Money 2004. Both work fine.

"disappointed with microsoft money 2004 deluxe"
Itried ms money 04 deluxe but encountered problem after installation when I was reaching the final stage of data entry for my accounts. Apparently the software is geared to access data with hooks to microsoft net passport and msn money site. although I have a hotmailaccount it gave me en error "money has encountered an error and will shut down.... this errror is related to a mspfct10.dll file problem. Msn email tech support could not solve it and they tried the ususal tricks related to another dll file problem witnessed with this product. There is a sample account in the system folder of this software which one can use and it functions without a problem,but you loose the additional functionality by noy logging to the account and web via passport.Also downloading statements to the accounts was unreliable and sometimes inaccessible. I returned it to ms after 10 days of B testing. I would stick to quicken new user edition which is easy to function but still is inadequate

"Not worth the upgrade"
For Quicken Usrs: I wouldn't waste my money on this product especially if you're well established with your current version of Quicken. If you decide to change over, you might want to consider Money 2003. You might get it cheaper than version 2004.

I just downloaded the trial version of MS Money 2004 and have to say that I was quite disappointed. Thank goodness for trial versions. I still had version 2003 on my computer when I tried version 2004. For current Money 2003 users: Don't forget to backup your current money 2003 data files because the trial version will convert those files. If you want to go back to using 2003, you'll have to restore the old data files.

I have to say that I didn't notice any changes from the previous version (2003). The calculations/numbers that 2004 produced were pretty much the same I had with 2003. The one thing I really wanted to know is if I could generate a customized report with a line graph. I wanted to look at spending trends for certain of my bills over the past year. In version 2003 you could not use the line graph (only bar and pie chart) even though it was there but greyed out. This really didn't make any sense. Why offer the feature but grey it out? I tried every combination but could never get the line graph to work. I also noticed that the information on the chart was not well organized but real confusing. The labels and legend on the chart were not placed in the correct areas. You had to constantly refer to the chart's legend for information so you could unstand what the chart was telling you. Well--version 2004 didn't change anything. It's the same lousy format. The other thing I wanted to know is if MS had made any changes to Tax Estimation feature. I have to tell you that it hasn't changed either. It seems money continues to consider everyone in the 27% tax bracket and doesn't really allow you to change it. The questions you're asked about your taxes hasn't changed either. They need to do a better job of integrating the information you put in all year round with their tax estimator. It still has a lot of holes in it. I guess they're saving that feature for a future upgrade.

I'm back to using Money 2003, because I really never had any problems with it. MS needs to set up a forum for this product so they can listen to our comments and make this a better product.