I’m not seriously into geneaology, but I thought it would be nice to have something to log all the various bits of family information, and present them in a graphical, easy-to-use format. Someplace to keep track of the usual questions, like “how many kids does Cousin Berenice have”; or “which ancestor was the horse-thief and how am I related”; or “when did Great Grandma come over from the Old Country”.
Any suggestions?
Fire up your favorite search engine and feed it the keywords <genealogy software reviews> and you’ll get more hits than you can shake a forest of sticks at (which is why I’ve decided not to suggest any particular site - too much to sift through).
Since you’re a “casual” genealogist, I suspect any software will be adequate for your needs. Course, there’s always the risk of your interest becoming more than casual, as some of us can attest. (Gee, all I wanted to do was find out for Dad where his paternal grandmother was buried - now you can’t keep me away from a genie library!)
For PCs, I believe Family Tree Maker is sort of “standard.” You can download it either for free or for darn close to free. (My definition of cheap software: anything under $30 = “darn close to free”)
I have a Mac and highly recommend Reunion, for which I believe they also make a PC version. I have eight generations to track on both sides, so you may not require such a pricey bit of software for your purposes. On the other hand, if you ever do develop a serious geneology obsession, you won’t have to upgrade. You’ll have the good software already. I like Reunion because it allows me to dump photos I took at family gatherings into the entry for a given person’s name – so you can see Grampa’s face while you’re lookin’ up all his cousins names.
Since you’re looking for opinions more than hard facts, I’ll move this thread to the IMHO forum.
bibliophage
moderator GQ