I was doing a little research on which banks have the online service which interacts with my financial management package - Microsoft Money - when I came upon this startling announcement:
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| Important notice: Microsoft Money Plus is no longer available for purchase. All purchased Money Plus products must be activated prior to Jan. 31, 2011. | |||
I was actually giving some thought to upgrading my Money software because people giggle at my version 2002. (I hate naming the software version after the year it is sold.) And now I CAN'T upgrade it! What is going on.
Well, the view from the sidelines is that Microsoft has been caught short again. With all their visionaries, they were busily improving a great product while the market was slipping another direction. At least a lot of people think that's what's happening. Intuit, the makers of Money's cheif competition, thought to themselves (literally, they don't talk at Inuit, they just think) "If the purpose of a money management program is to track bank accounts, investment accounts, loans, assets, even profits and losses of a side business, shouldn't it be as portable as possible? And what is more portable than web access?" So suddenly programs and data that used to reside on your home computer now resides in some great vault in the sky as a part of the Internet.
Microsoft will be making future announcements and will undoubtedly be back in the market soon but the word is: Don't upgrade your Money right now. Or your Quicken for that matter. And you might have to actually write one or two checks before this settles down. Things should be sorted out within a year.
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