Words passed my ears not so long ago that filled my heart with hope. “Have you looked at Quicken Online?”
A prompt buzz of the site showed some promise, much like a pre-psychotic Britney Spears. At a paltry $3/mo, who could argue with that pricing, either? My fond memories of the Quicken application under Windows led me to believe that finally, I could have my Quicken functionality back, but under Linux. Or, for that matter, independent of any operating system.
I was wrong.
You see, the real Quicken application does a mighty number of wonderful deeds, carefully crafted to the exacting specifications that you’ve come to accept from Intuit since the widespread adoption of Quicken in the early nineties. I don’t need to explain to you what the real Quicken does, though. I merely have to show you what the online version does.
In extended detail, what Quicken Online does for you:
- Downloads your data from your financial institutions
- Lets you categorize it
- Puts it in a pie chart
Let’s pretend for a moment that the above is actually useful. What can you do with the above? I’ve come up with some clever ideas.
- Spend more money in an attempt to make one part of the pie bigger than the other
- Point out the pie to random people in your office building
- Pretend that the pie chart is an actual, multi-colored pie
- Go buy a real pie
- Tell your friends you’re so utterly independent of Micro$h4ft Winblows that you don’t even need Quicken for Windows, even under WINE support
- Go to the liquor store and buy some real WINE support
- Run those damn kids off your lawn
I have to wonder what the development plan was for Quicken Online. Perhaps the business case went a bit like this:
- Create a quick webapp and call it Quicken Online
- Market the webapp
- ???
- PROFIT!!
I give this application a C for effort, and an F for execution.
Of course, F is for Fail.
-LightningCrash