Intuit, the company behind Quicken, the money management software, has announced Quicken 2008. As part of the new release there is now a cheaper entry-level offering, dubbed Quicken Starter Edition 2008, which retails for just $30. The Starter Edition will replace the existing Quicken Basic.
Taking a tip from Microsoft Windows Vista, Quicken has introduced a confusing slew of new products:
The precise differences between the various editions isn't exactly clear, except to say that each jump in price gets you a handful of new features.
The entire range of Quicken 2008 products will be available for purchase or download directly from Intuit on August 27, 2007 and should hit the shelves of your local retailer by September 9.
But the more interesting news is that Quicken plans to launch an online version of its software sometime later this year. No details are available right now, but Quicken has one thing going for it that many money management sites on the web don't — name recognition.
Whether or not that matters remains to seen. Quicken may well face an uphill battle against sites like my personal favorite Wesabe, which brings a whole host of web 2.0 goodness to the normally boring task of money management.
I've contacted the Quicken team to see if Compiler can get in on the demo version that's currently in private beta, but so far I haven't heard back from Intuit. We'll be sure to give you a full review of the software and web service whenever we get our hands on a copy.
Update:
Here's a few quick response from Intuit regarding what we can expect from the online version of Quicken:
And I've signed up for the private beta, which you can do as well by pointing your browser to the beta site.
