Quicken 2008
Quicken 2008 is a small upgrade of Intuit’s popular personal finance program. This well-built money manager is easy enough for novices yet powerful enough for veteran number crunchers, although it feels like a warmed-over version of last year’s model with a few helpful enhancements. That said, the 2008 version is a bit better at managing savings and investments, categorizing expenses, and tracking 529 college savings contributions.
Setup and interface
Setup for Quicken 2008 is mostly unchanged from last year, and the process is largely automated and fast. Luckily, Intuit doesn’t demand that you have a brand-new computer, as the application can run on Windows 2000 or more recent, and a recommended 256MB of RAM. Software installation took only 5 minutes in our tests on both Windows XP and Vista machines, and we successfully downloaded transactions from a major bank and a brokerage firm in about 10 minutes.
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