If you need automatic bank downloads hope that the program recognizes your bank and that the bank works through Intuit because otherwise you will have to download the data manually (and that's a pain even for savvy users). After spending half a day messing with Essentials I've decided that it is only good for users that have simple finances: one checking account, one credit card and no loans. However, Intuit seems to have given up on a full featured upgrade and hobbled together what they consider the essential tools for a personal finance program. I trusted that the new Quicken (2010) would rectify that slight. Newer iterations of the Mac program since have never offered anything like what is offered to pc users. I transferred those PC files to the Mac when a version for OS X came out and was surprised that many of the financial tools were missing from that Mac version. I picked up on Quicken as soon as a version for the PC came out. I was a bookkeeper back when Visical and Lotus 1-2-3 were THE spreadsheet programs.
