Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!fleming
From: fleming@cup.portal.com (Stephen R Fleming)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacMoney vs Dollar & Sense (from Wiseman)
Message-ID: <24815@cup.portal.com>
Date: 8 Dec 89 12:48:07 GMT
References: <1989Dec1.153215.20583@csmil.umich.edu> <24750@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 63

This was accidentally e-mailed to me rather than posted.  I'm posting it to
the net at the author's request.  I am guilty of oversimplifying Jeff's
views on MacMoney... mea culpa!
  
>From: uunet!tellab5.tellabs.COM!wiseman (Jeff Wiseman)
>Subject: Re: MacMoney vs Dollar & Sense
>Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
>In-Reply-To: <24750@cup.portal.com>
>
>Thought I would just clarify this a bit.
>
>I wouldn't say IN GENERAL that MacMoney is superior. I would say (from the
>feed back that I got and my own experience) that MacMoney is probably more
>solid and definitely people are happier with the support that they have
>received.  Survivor Software seems to be doing a great job here.
>
>HOWEVER
>
>The impression that I get from people who have used D&S for a while
>(myself included) and have tried MacMoney or Managing your Money like the
>"orthogonality" and flexibility of D&S's interface so much that in spite
>of the other problems, they have still returned to D&S.
>
>Please note that most of D&S's "bugs" seem to be nuisance problems. For
>example, under certain conditions, if you have a report on the screen and
>then in another window modify a transaction that can affect that report, 
>the report will update but it can rearrange the accounts involved in the 
>sums such that the sums are incorrect - this is obvious though since the 
>account has physically moved on the report into another subgroup making the 
>error obvious. All you do to correct this is to close the window and then
>regenerate it.  Everything then comes up clean.
>
>Another is if you do a Net Worth report but only select (a) Liability
>account(s), the report shows them as positive values instead of negative.
>Minor point since when you add a single asset account to the report, this
>corrects itself.
>
>I have yet to see D&S crash. Also, I have several (7-10) inits that I use
>and that behaviour of D&S seems to be consistent regardless of whether the
>inits are there or not.
>
>Remember though, pre- 4.X versions of D&S had a very different interface.
>I am using version 4.1c, the most recent.
>-- 
>Jeff Wiseman:....uunet!tellab5!wiseman OR wiseman@TELLABS.COM
  
Personal opinion on the above -- I trust Jeff's judgement, but I wouldn't
want to trust my finances to a program that makes "obvious" errors.  Two
reasons:  (1) I often do my bookkeeping late at night, and there's no
guarantee that I'll be sharp enough to notice even obvious errors...
(2) Once a program has made an obvious error, I'm awfully uncomfortable
with the idea that it might be making NON-obvious errors as well.
  
Different strokes for different folks.  MacMoney works for me, so I have no
incentive to change.  If you're purchasing for the first time, try 'em all
and see what works for you.
  
+--------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
|  Stephen Fleming         | My employer doesn't pay for this account. |
|  fleming@cup.portal.com  | In fact, my employer doesn't even know    |
|  CI$:   76354,3176       | I'm here!  Disclaimer enough for any      |
|  Voice: (703) 847-7058   | network-aware lawyer-types, I hope...     |
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