European Court Rejects Microsoft Antitrust Appeal – New York Times

Sounds like it wasn’t even close…  In the 9 years I’ve followed MS Litigation (Anti-Trust Edition), usually these announcements have a semblance of the court saying something that made it sound like there was some deliberation or tough questions somewhere. 

What’s reported here (I’ve not read the decision), not even close…

European Court Rejects Microsoft Antitrust Appeal – New York Times

Goodbye Quicken

Tonight, as I was setting up my home office, I reinstalled Quicken 2004.  At the conclusion of the installation, it told me that the only way I could continue downloading and accessing all the online banking sites (for 401K, investment accounts, checking accounts, etc.) was to upgrade to Quicken 2007.

This is an egregious breach of customer trust on Quicken’s part.  There can’t be a reasonable technical explanation for making this change.  It’s purely to drive an upgrade to Quicken.  This was a surprise and it was one that I was never told to expect when I bought Quicken 2004. 

This is complete bunk. 

Having just concluded years of working on Microsoft Windows, and having personally driven several of our efforts to do a better job on our lifecycle policies (Windows XP Home’s extention announced in January 2007 was a key one), I’ve experienced this issue as a businessperson directly. I get that there are hard issues around satisfying shareholders at stake.  Still, Quicken, if you’re the kind of company that’s going to take to this kind of approach to your customers, then I’m not a customer for you.

So long Quicken… Hello Microsoft Money.