Quicken - Intuit

-Video overview of product is not very helpful, it covers all the points but doesn't allow users to help remember the flow, MS money's video demo is far better
- lot of options of different versions of the product, pretty confusing
- 2 companies in picture, Quicken and Intuit which made the online version
- free trail for 1 month, but 3$ per month there on? why is it priced so high while I get some services fully free?
- elaborate sign up form to just try with payment information :( all this to have a peek at the features and get a feel of the product -> not inviting
-the feature spec on the web is minimal, hardly informative

Buxfer

+nice live demo of the product, with random data sample to interact
+online
+clean and simple ui flow
+but for 2 or 3 words most of the wording in the ui is simple to understand
- time out for demo: in case u open the browser and wander around doing something else the demo expires
- not too many trends
- bit of confusion on how the split transactions with friends work
+ follows the trend of automatic upload of previous transactions
+ user created rules applied with tags is nicely done
+ found it very easy to learn, could explore almost all functions available: setting up account, rules, reminders, slipt transactions with friends... dont know if this is allows friends to be notified

List of products

Here I will append as comments all the various personal finance softwares I come across.

Mint

About Mint and features
+ui looks clean
+online
+mobile updates
+has an aspect of helping complete newbies
- navigation issues...links to overview, features, spending trends etc. come below the fold after your are signed in, before sign in the features come right in the top. Once you are signed-in wont allow a peak at how it work without taking ur account info, lot of people would like to look before give important info. I personally reached the features page after a lot of looking around, realized its on the home page to start with but goest to below the fold after sign in.
+ helps u trust, veriSign etc.
- the writing is not very web-user friendly: long sentences
- in the Features page the layout of info is confusing, and it gives a broken view of the ui rather than a neat flow like in ms-mymoney
+comparisons of spending trends to aggregate data
+automatic categorization, fetches data from all your bank accounts
+overall attitude to help in easing out finance management rather than just maintain logs

Links - Usability Resources

Are appended as comments.

Observation and Comments

On this entry I will post any interesting observations or comments, both mine and others.

On MS Money: few good points at first glance

+ easy flow for beginners, teaches one in a step by step process
+ video tutorials
+ reports,spending tracker:good data viz to see trends in spending
+ over emphasis on helping one plan their finances rather than just helping in log and track their expenditures which is a not motivating.
+ wording is non-cryptic
+ inclusion of tutorials that teach finance management to novice users
+ broad categories are good
+ guessing the category(5 budget groups) for transaction, tracks budget well:painlessly
+ homepage has good snapshots to start with( Account info, upcoming bills, budget info)
+ linked to your online accounting information :)

.... will add more as I come across as comments to this same post

Installing KMyMoney

(my personal experience of installing kmymoney)

This is so confusing... there is no one setup file I could just click and it goes... next > next > next...
so me couldnt install it.

More over with Ubuntu to get the KDE environment, I have to install KDE...
Now how does a Windows user's understand these scenarios?
I only vaguely understand KDE and GNU.
Thanks to Chetan for enlightening me on this.

And there are issue like you cant install without some admin rights?
So I need to get to the command line, login as "SUDO", by the way I am no Linux geek.
So Chetan did the holy ritual of running some commands...
I was totally lost midway...
Job still not done... By this I am lost at to what he is trying to do, compile the code directly? I dont know...
Or maybe its all just Chetan's geeky way of doing things.

Went to Adept Manager, searched for Finance softwares...
Found KMyMoney and couple of other finance SWs.
This is cool to not go to internet and get all kinds of mixed results.
This even manages installing it...

But again... some admin rights?
I am logged in as admin right?
He did some more command line talking...
bestowed SUDO powers to Adept Manager, and installed couple of Finance SWs that work for Linux as I need to do a comparative study.
I already installed MS Money and went upto as far as syncing it with my online banking passwd in first go... only issue I installed Free Trail version, so I guess its limited and the call drops.

Wubi - Ubuntu installer for Windows

http://wubi.sourceforge.net/



Trying to install this to create a KDE envi for KMyMoney

Crash and MS money

Messed up my windows while trying to install Ubuntu.
Link to free trail installation of MS Money-> http://www.microsoft.com/money/freetrial_HomeandBusiness.mspx