What's the Latest on Quicken and Ultra High Resolution Monitors?

mrzookie

I haven't found a whole lot of recent postings on the subject, so I thought I put it out there again. 

I'm replacing a 5 yr old 13.3" WIN laptop with another of the same/similar size. My current box has a QHD+ (Quad Hi-Def+, 3200x1800). Apparently, the only widely available screens this size now are FHD (Full Hi-Def, 1920x1080) and UHD (Ultra Hi-Def 4K, 3840x2160), so I either need to take a step up or a step down. I'd prefer to go with the UHD, but I'm concerned about how Quicken will play with it, and that's a big consideration. 

Currently, Quicken is not absolutely clear, but is totally usable. I'm pretty sure I'm using the fix described in this article, https://www.quicken.com/support/work-around-display-issues-high-resolution-monitors. I see the file quicken.exe.manifest in the Quicken directory, so I guess that's a pretty good indicator. I also recall making an adjustment to the High DPI Scaling Override (that setting is currently greyed out, so I assume it's the manifest fix that's controlling it now) that made Quicken crystal clear, but it made Quicken slower and the screen lighting took too long to stabilize, which is why I opted against using it.

Thanks for any info and/or advice. 

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @mrzookie

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to ask your question, although I apologize that you have not received a response.

There is an ongoing Idea thread available here to support 4K monitors they are not fully supported at this time. 

There is also a previous discussion on the topic available here. Hopefully, someone comes along that can offer some personal experience on the subject.

I hope this helps!
-Quicken Tyka

Chris_QPW

I will add to what was said in the other threads.  In fact what will happen is "unknown".
As a general rule (based solely on what people have posted) as the require scaling goes up the more likely there will be problems.  But that isn't absolute.  And you certainly can't judge it based on the resolution alone.

Given a 13.3" screen that is about 11.6 width.  So it has a DPI (dots per inch) of 331.
"Normal DPI" is about 96 (less for people with "old eyes").  So in one form or another the scaling will probably be over 300%.   That is a lot of scaling.  Note that means for instance taking every icon/button/image that is "drawn" putting in 3 or more dots for every real dot in the image.  That is what causes the "fuzzy" look.

Now lets say I had the same resolution on a 28" monitor.  That is is 24.4" width.
To get the 96 DPI would require only at 150%.

Note that "large fonts" is just another form of scaling, but it is Quicken that is doing the scaling.  And also note that Windows scaling and "large fonts" add to each other.

Now past all of that there is the unknown of the video card/driver.  In the second link Tyka gave that is example of an "extreme case".  The result was things being scaled way bigger than should have been the case.  It looks like some kind of incompatibility.
Something like that can never be predicted.

One thing to note is that one workaround that would most likely always work would be to drop the resolution of the screen before using Quicken.

mrzookie

@Chris_QPW
Are you familiar with the "manifest" fix I mentioned? If yes, do you know exactly what its doing? It seems to be working pretty well on my QHD+ laptop. But I think you're right about the video card/driver. They're the wild cards and will likely determine whether there's trouble or not. Good thing Costco's got a 90 day return policy.

While I've got your attention, can you point me to where I download the full program to load onto the new laptop?

Thanks.

Chris_QPW

I thing the best place to get the install for Quicken in in your account on Quicken.com, but you can also get it from:
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-do-i-download-quicken-quickencom-after-i-buy-it

The manifest workaround was posted in this thread (note that the \s in the post were removed by the old forum):
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/17277609#Comment_17277609

These days I'm sure if you can't just do the equivalent by using the compatibility mode settings in the properties for the Quicken Desktop shortcut.

If you find the manifest workaround is better than the compatibility settings I'm sure others would appreciate you posting on that if you find out.

mrzookie

@Chris_QPW
Thanks for your help. I'll post an update when I have load it up.

mrzookie

Here's the update on using Quicken my new XPS 13 UHD laptop using Intel Iris Xe graphics:

When I first opened Quicken, the look was similar to what it was is was on my older QHD+, slightly fuzzy but with lighter weight characters that were noticeably pixelated. Still usable but not very good. I went to Compatibility Settings and changed the High DPI Scaling Override setting to "System" and there was no change. I tried "System (Enhanced)". The type is slightly smaller and lighter weight, but its clear as a bell. I've honestly never seen it look so good. Reports, graphs, budgets, tax planner, retirement planner all look good. All the hovers are working too. A lot of people would consider this to be a clean, updated look, but my older eyes wish the typeface had a bit more heft. Still, its very good, and I'm relieved it didn't turn out to be a much bigger problem

Few minor issues.
(1) A number of random column titles on the Investing Quotes and other investment pages are not displaying. Expanding the column width doesn't help, so it has nothing to do with that. I've got to play with it some more to see if there's a pattern, and a way to fix it. I'm open to suggestions on this one.
(2) Had to slightly shorten one of the fields in the Banking and CC ledgers so the balance field would fully display on the screen.
(3) The only thing I've found so far that's not displaying as well as before is the Morningstar Portfolio X-Ray (I'm using Premier). That used to be very clear and is now slightly fuzzy. Might actually be the same, but compared to everything else it looks off.

On a related matter, the extra memory (32gb) and/or upgraded processor (11th gen I7) have given Quicken some punch, and its performing a lot better. Its still not a racecar, but if you're having trouble with slow performance, a heftier box will help.

Chris_QPW

Thank you very much for your update.

On this:

mrzookie said:

On a related matter, the extra memory (32gb) and/or upgraded processor (11th gen I7) have given Quicken some punch, and its performing a lot better. Its still not a racecar, but if you're having trouble with slow performance, a heftier box will help.

I suspect that the improvement comes from a faster processor than the memory.  Quicken is a 32-bit program and under the normal settings can't use more than 2GB of memory.  And in fact uses far less than that. About the only time memory would come into play is if you are running a lot of other programs and therefore they are hogging the memory.  For instance some of the web browsers are really bad memory hogs, especially for the people that keep a ton of tab open at the same time.

The main bottleneck for Quicken (after you have SSDs, a fast drive is the best thing you can do to improve performance as far as hardware is concerned) is the fact that it will not take much advantage of multiple cores.  Quicken wasn't written with multiple cores in mind, it is pretty much a single thread kind of program.  When processors hit about 3 to 4 GHz they were getting to hot and so they instead looked to multiple cores to improve performance.  But that only applies if the programs are written to do things in parallel and take advantage of the extra cores.

But lately the last few generations of processor have again started to do real improvements to both the efficiency (doing more things in the same cycle time), and the clock speed.

mrzookie

@Chris_QPW - Agree on all counts, especially on the drive. I've had SSDs for a long time now, so I've kinda stopped paying attention to the specs bc they all perform well, but yeah, when it comes to databases, drive performance is a really important factor.

onix

If you throw Remote Desktop into the mix, this problem just multiplies. [Removed-Violation of Community Guidelines] 

mrzookie

Another small update, one week in:

1 - I've now noticed that, in addition to some of the Investment page column headers, the Budget column headers are missing too. That means there's no indicator of which month I'm looking at. Unlike those on the Investing page, there are no hovers to help out. I've got a kludgy workaround, but this a pain in the butt. Don't know if its just sloppy coding, or something more difficult, but if anyone from Quicken is reading this, it would be great if you could have someone take a look at why the budget and Investing headers have disappeared in UHD mode, and fix them if its at all possible.

2 - The lightweight text used throughout the app makes it hard for me to tell regular text from bolded (this is not an issue with reports). If I've entered transactions in a register that's not yet matched to one online, those bolded transactions are difficult to discern from the others. Not a major issue, but still something that I need to pay closer attention to to avoid errors.

On a related subject, I've started using an app that helps out a lot. Its called Glassbrick Screen Magnifier and its available for free on the Microsoft Store. Unlike the default Windows magnifier, its highly customizable. You can increase/decrease the magnification as much as you want using key combos that you define. Once you launch it, you can turn on a session at anytime, turn it off and re-open/close as needed. There's an icon on the taskbar that lives there until you either exit the program or turn off your computer. It takes a little getting used to, but if the size of the text is a problem for you, this can be a useful workaround.
 [Full Disclosure: My pitch is merely to help out others who may be experiencing the same problems I am. I have no connection, financial or otherwise, to this app whatsoever, and accept no responsibility for any issues it might cause on your computer.)

Chris_QPW

For the problem with the light fonts.  For at least the non investment registers you should be able to go in and change the fonts to be "bold" and such.  That might help.

mrzookie

Never knew there was a font adjustment in Q. Big help!
Thanks, as always, @Chris_QPW.