I really appreciate how Microsoft has really opened up many of its internal developer groups. I only wish this also applied to more of their consumer products.

For example, I am trying to set up online services for a bank within Microsoft Money. My bank allows passwords up to 32 characters. Microsoft Money allows me to enter 8 characters and that’s it. WTF!? With all this emphasis on security, you’d think they would support more than 8 characters in a password, especially when the bank does.

So I try going to the support site and there is nothing helpful. Since my copy is over a year old, I get the lovely option to pay $35.00 for a support incident. Heck for that money, I might as well upgrade, but how do I know this problem is even fixed in the latest versions? I don’t.

So following the support instructions, I head over to the Microsoft Money community newsgroups to be greeted with the message…

Service Temporarily Unavailable

We apologize for this inconvenience. Please try again later.

Great! It appears there is no way for me to register a complaint or have someone tell me whether this is fixed in the latest version of Money for this institution. Maybe I should have bought Quicken.