Why Intuit should have an Open Source version of QuickBooks...

Benjamin Scott bscott at ntisys.com
Thu Nov 18 19:45:01 EST 2004


On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, at 7:26pm, hewitt_tech at comcast.net wrote:
> ... making QuickBooks compatible with Open Source platforms would not only
> open up new markets but make them less dependent on Microsoft behaving
> themselves ...

  Only problem with that is that QuickBooks is *extremely* married to
Windows.  It uses Microsoft's HTML engine for most of it's internal display
functions.  It makes heavy use of ActiveX.  And it's really badly done, so
much so that if you set the Internet Explorer "Security" settings to
anything less then "wide open", it stops working.  It's a horrible program.

> Oddly QuickBooks will happily work with a Linux fileserver running Samba
> but Intuit won't support users in that configuration.

  Intuit won't support QuickBooks, period.  Intuit makes Microsoft look
good.  At least when you call MS Product Support Services and pay the $245
it takes to speak to someone with clue, you get someone who is willing and
able to solve your problem.  With Intuit, you buy a buggy product, pay extra
for support, and then they just tell you to buy a more expensive "edition"  
of QuickBooks.  You do that, encounter the same damn bugs, call back, and
they can't help you.

  Gaaaaah, I hate that program.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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