Thanks for the information. I t's a good day to play around and see what I can find. Appreciate your help.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Cheri Mello" <[email protected]> To: "Azores Genealogy" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 9:37:10 PM Subject: Re: [AZORES-Genealogy] genealogy program GGervais, You'll get people telling you that the best program is the one they are using. That's not going to help you. If you want certain things in a program and can tell us, that may steer you towards one program or the other. The 4 most popular in the PC market are: Family Tree Maker (FTM), Legacy, RootsMagic, and The Master Genealogist. You already know about FTM. Legacy has their Standard Edition (free) and their Deluxe (pay). So download Legacy and play around with it: www.legacyfamilytree.com The Deluxe has about 100 extra bells and whistles. RootsMagic also has a free editions. They call it their Essentials. Download that and play around with it too: www.rootsmagic.com/essentials I don't know how many extra bells and whistles their paid version has. The Master Genealogist (TMG) allows you to explore their full program for 30 days free (and then it locks you out). www.whollygenes.com Download that and play around with it (but make sure you have close to a month to peruse it. Trying to figure that program out 2 days before it expires is like doing a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle in 1 hour). I go over all 4 programs in a lecture in Salt Lake. Your local genealogy society may have speakers. Request that they find a speaker that can lecture on genealogy software. General overview of the 3 you haven't tried: RootsMagic probably has the smallest learning curve. However, I've read that some people find that they outgrow that program rather easily. However, there's a RM User Group at one of my local genealogy societies, and there are a couple of engineers in there. So it's whatever makes you happy. Legacy has a pleasing user interface and a smaller learning curve. It can be a fairly powerful program, too. It's Source Writer is absolutely fantastic. No other program has a source feature like that. I'd have to look up the cons for Legacy. TMG is the most powerful program out there. They have a bit of a learning curve, but they have tried to do things to make it easier (they have a beginner's mode vs. an advanced mode). Their filtering feature is awesome (you have to practice learning how to use it, though). And it's just about completely customizable too. So you don't like the user interface out of the box, you can change it. When I bought a genealogy program in the mid-90s (I think this was back in the Windows 3.1 days), I had 2 criteria. 1) It had to have a character field long enough to take a city name the length of Ribeira das Tainhas or Vila Franca do Campo. 2) It had to take diacritics. Those accented letters. I wanted the names to be written properly. I wanted José de Mello, not Jose de Mello. Only 1 program on the market could do that at that time. Now, it's a moot point. They can all do that. So if you have any specific concerns for a genealogy program, ask away. Or try all 3 and then ask away. But make fake family and marry yourself to yourself, mess up on dates and make someone born after they died, make someone have a baby out of wedlock, etc. See how each program handles or display these things. Also, depending on where you live, see if there is User Group in your area (all the web sites above have a User Groups section where you can check to see if there is one in your area). We get people dropping in to our group wanting to see what the program is like before they purchase it. Cheri Mello Listowner, Azores-Gen Researching: Vila Franca, Ponta Garca, Ribeira Quente, Ribeira das Tainhas, Achada -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores . Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores . -- For options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Azores Genealogy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/azores.
