Thursday, January 12

Windows XP + Quickbooks 2006 = No Sleep for Me

It is now about 6 a.m., and I have been in the office for about two hours. Why, you ask?

Well, I will tell you. In the thick of W2 preparation season, we were forced to install Quickbooks 2006 on the main XP machine in the office. That machine is also the office fileserver. I know, not a great practice but money is also an issue.

So, it turns out that Quickbooks 2006 is a major re-write of the program. The install completely crashed the computer. Even the XP recovery console wouldn't touch the damage.

So, here I am rebuilding the machine. I am just glad that I have a strict backup regime in place.

No wonder I use linux whenever possible. I have never seen a Windows installation that is stable.

I have a few choice words for Intuit as well. They insist on releasing a new version of Quickbooks every year, and then making the file formats incompatible with prior years. Worse, they force you to upgrade by cutting off access to payroll tables for old versions of the software. Oh, and these new versions seem to be barely beta software.

In this whole fiasco, I have only one vendor whose products I recommend. Mirra makes a backup appliance that just works out of the box. It syncs all files on all network computers each time that file is modified. Too bad that it only syncs Windows boxes.

2 comments:

GeeGuy said...

My XP Pro install is solid as a rock. No problems.

But I'm with you on Intuit. They're leaches.

Why is it that software companies, unlike virtually any other manufacturer in the world, feel justified in selling things that don't work properly, and then taking absolutely no responsibility for it?

Anonymous said...

Quickbook Pro 2006 Gave me headaches in Xp to no end. For some reason it likes the whole 98/Me better for me.

http://blog.is.ca/archives/4-The-Quickbooks-blackhole-for-quickness.html