Money 2003 Financial Suite (inc. Tax Saver Deluxe) by Microsoft

Description

Like the 10 editions that precede it, Money 2003 offers powerful personal finance management for home users. This edition includes all of the features that made previous editions invaluable to those trying to get a handle on their finances. Money 2003 offers account management, budgeting, planning and spending reports and a lot more. These features form the backbone of the book and have been improved over the last several years. There's little more Microsoft can do to improve these core features.

In recent editions, Microsoft has increased integration with Internet features, linking to MSN Money. The increased dependency on signing into MS Passport continues to baffle users, as the updates it provides can be handled without signing into Passport. In this edition the reliance is even greater: when loading Money Express (the Money-lite) reminder system, it presents a sign-in window when Internet access isn't required, thus slowing down use.

Users upgrading from a previous edition will find very little to write home about apart from some user-interface and report tweaks, a more customisable and detailed homepage, background connection to your banks and more links to MSN Money and FTyourmoney.com. There's a small performance improvement over 2002: users of the Financial Suite edition get improved investing tools for research and portfolio management and Quicken users will as usual find that there is a converter wizard should they want to transfer their Quicken data.

As with all personal finance management products, the benefit users get from this will be determined by the effort they put in. Money 2003 is a high-quality personal finance package that with regular use proves extremely beneficial. —Colin Neal

Platforms

Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows Me, Windows XP