I too postponed switching over to Lion for months, because I am utterly dependent on all the functionality in Quicken 2007, the stuff that is missing from Essentials. I too researched all the alternative apps (which all fell short), and even considered switching to the PC version. Setting up an external drive was not a great alternative for me, since I move around alot with my laptop, and I didn't want to lug around another drive.
My other problem is that although Intuit has promised the fix this Spring, given their track record of the last few years, who knows when it is going to show up. So, I needed a solution that I could run indefinitely, independen of Apple's OS update cycle.
But OTOH, it was getting increasingly urgent to upgrade to Lion, get rid of MobileMe and plunge into iCloud
So, here's what I did (which has been running happily for a month now):
- Use Parallels to set up another OS10 enviroment
- Install OS 10.5 Leopard Server on Paralells
- Install Quicken 2007, plus all updates
- Copy over my latest qdfm file into the Paralells enviroment
- Open the qdfm file with Quicken 2007 and voila: I have Quicken running in a window on my laptop, happily co-existing with Lion.
- Upgrade my laptop to Lion and move into iCloud
All the normal Quicken functions run happily and transparently within the Parallels environment. The only occasional glitch is that Parallels loses track of where the local printers are, but this is fixed by turningi printer sharing off and on in System Preferences.
There is only one disadvantage to my approach. While Parallels is fairly cheap, OS 10.5 Leopard Server or 10.6 Snow Leopard Server are NOT cheap (Paralles won't run your old, regular version of 10.5 or 10.6). So, if you don't already have one of these, you need to track down a friend with an extra copy he/she is not using anymore.