Can anyone suggest some good family tree software for Windows? Is Family Tree Maker, from geneology.com, any good?
thanks
I’ve got FTM version 10. I’ve been using them since version 5. I like it, easy to navigate. You can put your sources in for name, birth date, death date, burial date, marraige date and other things. Individual and marriage notes. I think the facts that you can enter are infinite. Plus they give you a free home page which you can put up to 22 megabytes of pics, reports and stuff on it.
The only thing I don’t like is that you can put in a source that proves a relationship between a parent and a child. Sure you can put it in the notes section but it’s not the same. Now they have passed me by and are on version 11 right now. Ooh now they use the year its … hmm 2005, the year after the year it’s released.
I’ve heard some people who swear by Family Origins. Looks like you can test out an early version of their program. I’d give it a test and see if you liked it. If so, go with it I think both of these programs are top of the line and good for what you need.
Brother’s Keeper. I’ve been using it for 12 years. It’s available as a free download, fully functional shareware, so you can see how you like it. It is regularly updated by the author, John Steed, and he is contactable by email or in the mailing list for his program and provides some excellent hands-on technical assistance. If you do decide to register the program, it’s only about $45 and that allows for perpetual upgrades.
Another cheap option is PAF - Personal Ancestral File, which is available for free from the LDS website. Click this link.
FTM is a good program and I know a lot of people use it. Personally, I prefer to support a nice guy like John Steed than the jerks behind FTM. I still remember when a new version of their software was released and many of my friends who’d ordered it online were sent two copies despite only ordering one. They were charged for both. They tried to get a refund but were all told that they absolutely had ordered two copies, on two different dates, and that they had a no refund policy. One of these people had been in hospital on the date she was supposed to have duplicated her order! All of them were quite clear on the fact that they only placed the order once. Broderbund refused to accept any responsiblity, and so all my friends were forced to try to sell their extra copies to friends and relatives to recoup their money. Broderbund may have gained a few extra sales by ripping them off, but they’ll never see a cent of my money again and I make sure to tell other people so they can be aware if Broderbund tries to pull the same stunt again.
That’s weird, I never had any problems like that. I think FTM makes their real money from their data CDs. And I’ve ordered those and sent them back because I didn’t find any ancestors and have gotten full refunds. I’m not sure if they still have that policy though. I haven’t ordered anything from them in years. Because they do try and trick people into spending big money on things like the Social Security Death Index which are available for free at places like rootsweb.
There certainly are lots of free genealogy software. Why not use a free one first and see if it suits your need.
Oh, and if you’re into genealogy from Virginia watch out. The funds for the Library of Virginia have had big spending cuts and their online data looks to be removed sooner or later. Better get your research done now.