Operation Gadget makes no friends in the industries that we cover when we take aggressive positions against the actions of gadget and software makers. But, I feel compelled to ask the question:

What is Intuit thinking?

They announced that on-line services for Quicken 98, 99, and 2000 are being discontinued in April and May. This is disrespectful of Intuit's customers for the following reasons:

• Quicken users pay for access to these on-line services through their banks,
• Quicken users were provided with about 90 days notice of the discontinuation of service.

It's one thing for Intuit to scale back or eliminate phone support offerings for these late-model versions of Quicken. If I were them, I would charge a premium for continuing per-incident support. But, the cessation of on-line services is really a poke in the eye to customers who are perfectly satisfied with the personal finance software they already have, and don't need technical support.

This on-line service cessation could also never be attempted in the business software market with such short notice. Even if notice was provided on January 1, 2004, that's just about 120 days for customers to learn of the decision, buy an upgrade, and convert their data. Why force them to upgrade so quickly?

As Jim Coates of the Chicago Tribune said in a recent column discussing Intuit's decision, "When it comes to planned obsolescence nothing ever seems to be illegal in the computer marketplace."