I recently tried using
MSN Money to manage a portfolio of stocks, first using Firefox and then the latest version of Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. Either way the result was the same: complete bewilderment.
I created a new "Windows Live ID" account with my UK postcode, and headed straight for the portfolio manager. This was helpfully pre-populated with various US stock indices: Dow Jones, NASDAQ Composite & S&P 500. Undeterred, I hit the New Transaction button which took me to a page with a helpful message about selecting an account, entering "the price of the transaction in the currency you used to purchase the investment" and the "cost of the commission in the currency used in the account" and hitting submit.
It turns out even this limited and poorly explained functionality was a cruel hoax.
Beneath this text was a single input box for a stock symbol and a submit button. I entered GB:ARM after looking this up with the handy "Find Symbol" link: no there is no way to enter the company name if you don't know the ticker, nor is there autocomplete drop-down in the search box (which Yahoo and Google have). Hitting the submit button simply adds the ticker to the portfolio, with no option to enter a date, price, commission...
I struggled on, and discovered that if you create a "New Account" (other than MSN Stock List), you're allowed to enter this information, W00t! I even installed something called the MSN Money Investment Toolbox (this takes a while, and once installed repeatedly claims "Microsoft(R) Corporation" is an "unverified publisher").
I don't expect managing a stock portfolio to be entertaining. However, neither do I expect it be further complicated by a bamboozling array of half baked technology. I encountered ActiveX security alerts, dialogue boxes saying the site is compressing my backup file (what backup file?), notices about the MSN Money Network Status (not working, apparently)...
Finally, I was asked so many times to come back later I decided to leave for good. I got the impression more time was spent programming error messages on MSN Money than implementing actual functionality. Highly recommended for masochists.
