I've pored over reviews of Quicken on amazon and pc-type magazine sites - and I'm left with reservations and questions I hope I can ask here.

I have Quicken 2007. The only thing I use it for is to download my stock transactions so it will make a nice tax report that I can import into Turbo Tax when I do my taxes. Quicken stops downloading transactions after 3 years (so after I last downloaded in March for tax-time), I can no longer do so. So I have to upgrade.

I began using Quicken for tracking my stock transactions when I was a much more active trader in the later 90's. I didn't do much of any trading the last couple of years - but I am doing some now. Quicken Premier 2011 is out - and gets some pretty mixed reviews. No raves - and some real problems. I had problems with every version of Quicken I used - downloading transactions was sometimes persnickity - other times what it downloaded did not correspond with reality and I had to alter many things manually - and it was a nightmare that took more than a full weekend. I don't think there's any choice but to stick with Quicken - and upgrade so I can keep downloading transactions.

But here are my questions (I know their customer support will be no help at all and don't know where I'll turn if I have problems with this software).

1- some people warn to back up quicken files before installing 2011 - bc. data can get lost. Not sure I can find and accurately back-up the appropriate data. Anyone familiar with the program that could help me know how to find the right files and know I'm not missing any?

2 - some have said that 2011 will uninstall the previous version - leaving you really stuck if something goes wrong. Is there anything I can do to stop the install from erasing the previous program?

3- often the actual Quicken files change format from year to year - and need to be changed before they get imported into the new program. anyone know if that would be true for transferring from 2007 to 2011?

4- do I have any alternatives? I don't think I do for 2 reasons. No other financial software these days. My old stock transaction history has to be imported into this new program - probably necessitating that it be an Intuit product. And it has to be compatible with Turbo Tax.

5 - will I be spared some of the trouble converting to a newer version since the only data I had in Quicken 2007 was stock transactions. I never used it for checking, budgeting, paying bills, etc.

6 - I think 2011 looks slightly preferable to 2010 9and gets me one more year of downloaded transactions before I again have to buy a new program)

Any help is appreciated - esp. with regards to downloading stock transactions and transferring information to 2011 (and later transferring to Turbo tax - which used to be a many stepped unnecessary pain a while back - I'm hoping that aspect has been improved).

I really need to get a newer version of Quicken and start downloading my transactions so I have time to see if there problems and deal with it - before I"m also scrambling to do taxes.

Thank you.

Lynn.

PS - other than this forum, are there places to go - people to ask? if I have trouble with the Quicken 2011 software?