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Intuit and Microsoft Head to Head Again

Techstination feature for Wednesday, August 29, 2001

Intuit and Microsoft go head to head again. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. The 2002 versions of Quicken and Microsoft Money are out... designed to make it easier than ever to keep track of your finances using your home PC. While Microsoft claims to be adding new users faster... .this is one category it doesn't dominate. Quicken, which has been around for seventeen years... says it still is holding onto a 75 percent market share. The question is... what are the companies doing to convince you to spend money on the upgrades? Quicken product manager Scott Sanchez... says set up is easier... and the software can now automatically categorize your entries...

"We've put an extensive list of company names into Quicken so it'll recognize Blockbuster for example and it'll say, hey, I know that's entertainment. You can change that category if you want to, but it recognizes those lists of company names. It also recognizes key words."

Then you can go back and see just what kinds of things you have been spending your money on. At Microsoft, product manager Karen Redetzki says one of Money's key new features is a personal assistant called MoneySide... .

"For example, MoneySide can help you determine whether or not you can afford a particular item while you're shopping online. And if you buy this item, whether or not you exceed the budget that you had set."

Sounds almost like a virtual spouse. Both products continue to integrate well with online banking. Both are available for Windows... .Intuit has a lock on Mac users... and has added a version built for OS X as well. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.