I downloaded a trial of Microsoft Money to see if it would work with my bank. Sure enough, my bank is listed in the supported institutions (Quicken, the other financial software I have, is not). Of course, when MS Money tried to connect to my bank, it couldn’t. ORFCU recently changed its name and domain name too which probably explains why the software couldn’t connect.
To log on to Money, you have to log in to a Passport account. That set of warning notes. Sure enough, after doing some testing with the file import (and being delighted that my bank records imported perfectly), I exited the program to head off to bed. The program said “Synchronizing account information so the info can be available on any computer…” In other words, MS Money was uploading my financial information to Microsoft’s Web sites. Oh no way was I going to let that stand. I promptly disabled that feature and clamped down on the firewall. So I know the import feature works, but there is no way I’m going to use that program. Too bad really. I had it figured out in a few minutes (where as with Quicken it took hours).
Once again, MS has ruined what could have been a nice app and has made it into something potentially sinister by storing financial records on *their* server. It’s not obvious when you read through the product descriptions, either.
