I took a look at GNUCash based on CJinNC's post and agree that it might be an alternative for those wanting to get out of Quickbooks desktop now that Intuit has made using QBD troublesome in their effort to force users to their online products. Just do a search on GNUCash and you will get to their website and to a number of reviews and comparisons. For anyone who insists on keeping their accounting entirely out of the cloud GNUCash may be the only alternative. It appears to be pretty basic, but then again how many use more than the most basic functions of Microsoft Word or Excel? For most of us the versions of those about 10 back already had all the features we normally need so upgrading to the latest version from MS with the latest new features was meaningless. 

CJ has a point about losing a lot of accounting history. But one soultion is obvious and that's just keep QBD all all those historic files and start with GNUCash, or other, going forward. If you have consolidated your QB files in the past as I have when they grew to great proportions you will have noticed that you lose the detail of past transactions anyway. And, in most cases I never need to look back more than a couple of years for detail anyway. 

Thanks to CJ for the suggestion.