<b>Quicken 98: the problems continue

Regarding Quicken 98 problems (as reported here last time), I have now received several dozen more emails complaining about this program (as well as three letters happily reporting no problems at all). One new complaint is that Quicken 98 is significantly slower than previous versions. Avariety of problems that were present in Quicken 7 and still not fixed were also mentioned. Overall, I received too many reports to mention them all here. Here is just one noteworthy example:

Rick Darenberg writes: "If you try to set the frequency of a transaction to 'twice a month' all the scheduled the newly scheduled transaction appear on one day. I.E. If I start a transaction on 1 Nov 97 and set it above, I get >30 new transactions showing up on 1 Nov 97. When you delete one of those transactions, you get garbage showing up on that date and have to reindex the file to clear it out. I called Intuit on this and they are 'aware of the problem.'" Another reader reported a similar conflict with the "twice a month" option.

Also, when Aron Spencer tried to use Quicken 98 without the WinSock Lib extension, mentioned in the Extras report, he got a message that said: "Quicken was unable to locate the NetManage Winsock Lib file. You will not be able to go online without crashing. Please reinstall or reboot without the shift key."

Mark Rougeux forwarded me a copy of a message on an AOL board from Intuit Tech Support that says: "There is no current timetable for any maintenance release." Jim Hoover writes that Intuit implied that a maintenance release would be forthcoming, adding: "Tech Support advised not using Quicken 98 until the QuickFill/Memorized transaction debacle is fixed." Stonewall Ballard writes that Intuit just told him that a patch will be out within "60 to 90 days." Pick whatever answer you like best.