Genealogy programmes
decfam
Hi there to all you family diggers!!I have just joined and I was wondering how you all put your information together? When I started (many moons ago) I was all over the place. no computers, just loads of note books with all the surnames mixed up,which I still have. How do you keep track and make sense of it all? How do you keep your precious research for posterity? Will it be lost when you die? Thankfully computers came along and so our problems were over, so we thought!!I created my own database with "Microsoft Access" I'm not a programmer mind you, but very proud of my handywork.However a florish of programmes came one after the other and just as quickly disappeared. I remember UFT - Ultimate Family Tree a great programme but was left to die by its new owners.There are many programmes out there today. Legacy, Roots Magic, The Genealogist and Family Tree Maker and many more.Which one(s) do you use and why?
How about sharing the positives and negatives of the programme you use or some other method.What should a programme be capable of doing for you genealogists?
Comments
decfam on 2011-03-17 13:25:32Yes it would be interesting to see/hear the various comments
Scott_J on 2011-03-17 15:37:02Hi (again) Decfam.
And yay Cork County, that's where my Irish roots are planted!
I truly think that technology has been as much of a curse as it has been a blessing. And believe me, I believe there are plenty of blessings in it!
The genealogy and family tree programs all have many of us "programmed" to just focus on filling in names and dates in short format, which is really important of course, but the art of full text prose and stories has taken a big backseat and is lost in our race to fill in the names and dates. And in our haste, we sometimes don't do nearly the verification that we should on information.
This is why I created this website, to just give people a big empty text box to type into and share.
Clearly, I believe there's a place for both.
As for your direct question, I've got two things working against me in my response. First, I use a Mac and genealogy software has lagged behind horribly. The second thing is that I'm in an off-period on the family tree research. I'm hoping that when I come back to it, the Mac versions of genealogy software have caught up (or surpassed!) their Windows counterparts. So I'm not actively using anything right now. Just some GEDCOM files waiting for a home and some love.
There is a new version of FTM for the Mac (well almost a year ago now), which I haven't tested yet.
thenguy on 2011-04-19 03:35:23I use a slew of programs because I don't like what just one has to offer. I started out on the Mac with Reunion which I still like except they have only had one upgrade. Then I switched to Ancestry.com which I really like execept they make you buy another product for reports which is awfull. I also use Family Historian, Ancestral quest, Legacy 7.5, and GedMill is good for making HTML pages of you genealogy files to upload on the web!