Sorry to say Good-bye to GnuCash

[Graeme Nichols]

On 11/20/2009 04:44 AM, BPG wrote:
> Well folks, I'm going back to that wretched Quicken.
>
> I've given GnuCash a good try (3 days straight) and I've had too many
> problems with it.
> Many have been because of my misunderstanding other have been because of
> data corruption.
>
> Maybe it's just Windows causing all the trouble?
>
> I thank you all for your help and wish you well in the development of Gnu.
> Perhaps someday GnuCash or some other open source accounting program will
> clobber Quicken and the others.
>
> Best wishes.
>    
Methinks you are being a bit hasty. GnuCash is very stable. I use 
GnuCash 2.2.9. I have been using it on Fedora, many versions latest 
being 11, and Win XP as well as on my laptop when away from home.

I use a USB drive to save my data to, XML format file, for both Win XP 
and Linux, desktop and laptop, and have never had a corrupt file. I just 
plug my USB disk into the particular machine I am about to use and fire 
up GnuCash. I do not use a database for two reasons. Easily corrupted 
and very difficult to transfer and, for me, gives no advantage. I never 
download my transactions from my bank and, personally, I see no reason 
for the feature as all transactions should be entered as they occur and 
reconciled when my statement arrives. I see no reason to implicitly 
trust my bank.

Another BIG plus with GnuCash is the stability of it's file format, XML, 
meaning the ability to fall back to a previous release without losing 
any data. In my humble opinion the best and greatest feature of GnuCash 
especially after Quicken.

I sincerely hope the developers never have the urge to change this.

I have been using GnuCash in parallel with Quicken for quite a few years 
simply for the reports in Quicken that I needed for my tax.

I have had many more problems with Quicken and find the product to be 
much more unstable than GnuCash. I used to have a subscription to 
Quicken where each new version was mailed to me on a CD as it was 
released. Each release required the data file to be updated to the 
latest file format preventing my going back to an earlier release. Sure, 
the data file as it was before updating was able to be read into an 
earlier release but that meant all subsequent entries were lost.

The latest release of Quicken I received, Quicken Personal Plus 2009 
Aust/NZ, would not even install on Vista and Quicken wouldn't/couldn't 
assist. The previous version, Quicken Personal Plus 2008 Aust/NZ, caused 
all sorts of unpredictable crashes.

I am more than happy with GnuCash and have not regretted giving Quicken 
the shove. The only problem with GnuCash is it's dearth of useful 
reports, yes, I know, send code, but unfortunately I'm no programmer. I 
read my GnuCash XML file into KMyMoney2 and print out my reports from it.

Graeme.