Family Tree Maker Review

Cottage in Caton in Littledale where my ancestors the Becks lived

I am a Mac user and though there are some very good Family History programs for the Mac, I was attracted by Family Tree Maker 2010 for several reasons.
  1. It included a 6-month ancestry.co.uk Essentials Membership as part of the package - a fantastic deal and saving over £65!
  2. It's advertised as the No. 1 selling family history software
  3. It's a UK version
  4. It came with various other deals including 25% off MyCanvas Printed Books and Posters
  5. Savings on Arrowfile Genealogy Albums and Acid Free Archival Pages, worth up to £44
  6. It comes with the trusted Ancestry.co.uk branding - hence the free 6-months membership. As I already had a membership with them that had lapsed and was ready to edit my family tree again and see what new leads they had discovered this was what sealed the deal for me.
So, it was with great anticipation that I installed the software on my Mac - using Parallels Desktop to run it in Windows XP. That's the great thing about Macs since Apple decided to drop Motorola for its CPU architecture and go with industry-standard Intel Processors, you can run Mac OS X and Windows on the same laptop!

First experiences with the software were favourable, apart from from one or two issues relating to the GUI - more Windows than Mac but then it is a Windows program and not a Mac one that runs native but has not migrated across with the look and feel of Windows, as happens with a lot of programs that have started off on Windows.

However, as I am confident with Windows, being long-term user of both platforms, even today, this was no problem. I soon had the software interfacing with my ancestry family tree and had my files synchronised - very handy. One important point to note here - you must be the owner of the family tree on ancestry. If you only have permission to view or share the tree you won't be able to download it into the software. You could, in this situation, ask the owner to send you a GEDCOM of it so you can import that into the software.

You can purchase your copy of Family Tree Maker from our partners at Avanquest

Features of Family Tree Maker 2010:
  • New tools and charts
  • Better organisation of photos and other media
  • Slideshows facility using images in your tree
  • Family books made from your tree to share with others
  • Standard templates for source material
  • Relationship tree showing your relationship to everyone else in your tree
  • Extended family birthday calendars
  • Scan images directly into your tree
  • Show family migration paths over time
  • Works with Windows XP/Vista/7
  • UK version
  • Interactive maps and timelines highlighting events and places in your ancestor's lives
These are just the highlights. All in all, its easy to see how its become the No. 1 seller!

In future posts I hope to share screenshots and tips for making the most of the software.
Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Colchester Castle

Image
Image via Wikipedia Colchester is where we have lived now for 13 years now, though I lived in Norwich before for about 2 years, before which I lived in Hackney, London for 10 years and originally I am from Lancashire. Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town and it has a lot of history to it, much of it evident in the surrounding buildings etc. In particular, it has an extensive Roman wall and a Norman Castle (actually its just the Keep - the largest in Europe ) as well as Dutch Quarter and evidence locally of the Celts in a network of defensive dykes. So there is plenty to see if you are visiting Colchester and in particular the Castle is where most visitors end up, but fortunately they are let out of the dungeons at the end of their tour! A brief history of the Castle:   The Castle is located just off the town's main high street in a lovely park with remains of the Roman walls still evident. Here is what the Castle Museum says about the Castle: Colchester
Read more

Where to find useful websites for researching your family history

Image
Introduction to useful sites for family history research So, you are researching your family history! You may be a newcomer to the hobby or you may have already made great progress. One thing is for sure, all of us doing family history research need good sources of information. These days we have the wonderful world wide web and numerous online sources that can prove very useful in our research. Of course, you can cough up a monthly or annual subscription to one of the paid Family History sites such as Ancestry, MyHeritage and FindMyPast (there are several others too). I have used several of these over the years and currently MyHeritage is the one I subscribe too though I have free accounts on others (limited features of course but still useful). However, this post is not about which paid site you should go for (that's a whole topic in and of itself) - maybe the next one). Instead this is to share some of the free sites that I have found useful. First up is Historic UK Historic UK
Read more

Free online resources for family history research

Image
Image via Wikipedia There are a wealth of free resources online used by genealogists - here is a small selection: www.freebmd.org.uk for some birth, marriage and death records in England and Wales . www.familysearch.org for selected parish records . www.rootsweb.com for genealogy chat and all kinds of relevant information. Remember that none of these is going to hold all of the records that you want.Also, at some stage you will eventually need to pay for some things such as birth, marriage and death certificates . Most people use computer software to hold their family tree details and produce nice looking charts. In a forthcoming post I will look at some of the software packages available. In the meantime, why not check out the three sites above as they are an excellent place to start. Related articles by Zemanta Discover Your Roots (lifescript.com) Family Tree Help! Free e-Book Teaches You How to Research and Fill in Your Family Tree Template (prweb.com) Ne
Read more