Ted Leung relates his frustration with Intuit. Intuit lost me long before the DRM thing, by acting like a bunch of used car salesmen. These days, you install Quicken and get 10 icons on your desktop and spend weeks turning off the screens asking if you want to give more money to Intuit. I recently found a Python based checkbook program, as well as CBB, written in Perl. My demands aren't much more than something that will let me balance my checkbook and keep track of my mortgage, and maybe enable tracking transfers between accounts (a big maybe, I think I could live without). As it is, I've been running with the same copy of Quicken since 1996, but recently decided to download my Visa statement in Quicken format. Unfortunately, my version can't read it correctly, and judging from the state of the imported data, it looks like Intuit was still using 2 digit years back in 1996; I suppose a Y2K bug gives people a reason to upgrade. Looking at the reviews on Amazon, the latest Quicken sounds like a disaster, and MS Money doesn't score too much better. Come on, personal finance programs have been widely available for what, twenty years? I don't think I'm being unfair by saying that an electronic checkbook is pretty much a solved problem. I'm not shelling out $30 - $40 for a 3 star (or less) checkbook program, at least not until I've explored the alternatives.