What finally did was blowing really hard on the fan area while the laptop was closed. I wish I were kidding.

I have done that! I figure I can futz around with some stuff before the late-summer sales and then decide.

Theo,

My response to your question is complicated by the fact that Quicken for the Mac is still ass-cakes. I don't understand why the product can function well for PC, but they haven't been able to get the Mac version right. That is the one thing I cannot find a solution that I LOVE for the mac.

At this point, I would probably recommend you look into Ibank and Mint.com - I think together they would probably afford you all the flexibility you need in a mac native wrapper.

I like the touch point more than touchpads, generally -- felt more responsive, didn't move my fingers off the keys as much. Since my old job used Thinkpads exclusively, I knew a lot of people who hated the pointer with a passion.

I suppose I could switch to Quicken on my PC, too -- theoretically, though, at least with the laptop, I can take it with me when I travel.

It may well be that Mac Quicken 2011 (or whatever) is enough advanced over Quicken 2004 that I will feel like I traded up.

I suppose I'm going to have to do some real goddamned research on this, you know? SIGH

That is the one thing I cannot find a solution that I LOVE for the mac.

Me neither. I use iBank, but I kind of hate it.

(What I really miss is the old MS Money that came with my Dell waaaaaaaaaay back when. Like, Win98 way back when. But it was a kickass finance program.)

Ibank is ALMOST what I want, but the UI is not good.

If you had a choice would you go for Quicken online or your own locally-owned copy? Not a theoretical question for me, my old iBook has Quicken 2004, which is the ONLY thing I'm using it for now, and I may as well decide what I'm going to do with it on the new MacAir.

Theo, I had Quicken 2005 (or possibly it was 2004) on my iBook, and it runs fine on Snow Leopard on my new MacBook Pro.

So if you want to keep using it and just transfer everything over, you might want to give it a shot.

Theo, afaict there isn't a Mac Quicken 2011, there's Quickbooks, which does way more than I need, and Quicken Essentials, which doesn't do a lot of what I want it to do. I'm using Quicken 2007, I think, and it's a little buggy, but not enough to make me want to downgrade to an earlier version.

I just don't trust having all my financial information in a web-based app, nsm for security concerns (I do my banking online, after all) but fear that I won't be able to get to my data when I need it, for some reason.

I tried pretty much every financial program available for the mac, and mostly disliked them all. I think I eventually settled on Quicken 2004, despite being ugly and slow, just for convenience. Then I realized that detailed tracking of every transaction was more trouble than it was worth for me, set up mint.com and basically only use it to look at my "Net Worth" every now and then. Seems I keep to a reasonable budget without tracking myself. I do download and archive PDF copies of my statements every few months for my records.

Apparently out-of-the-box notifications are finally going to be better on iPhones. At least iPhone 4s, since it seems 3gs may not be able to upgrade to iOS 5.