Customer Reviews

Family Tree Maker 9.0 Deluxe

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is not a good product. The graphics are fine however sign up for the free research and you learn you get nothing or very little for free. Most requests for info result is a request to join the pay service. By the way you need to sign up for the "Free" services and you will recieve weekly advertisments to upgrade, join, and a host of other things. I have sent them email to stop, yelled screamed; nothing works. It just keeps comming and comming. I was able to find all the information I got from their "free" service from independent searches. EVEN THE 10 CDs THEY PROVIDE USUALLY GET YOU A REQUEST TO JOIN THEIR PAID SERVICE. The basic product isn't bad but not at the price and the constant SPAM really ticks me off..I GET ENOUGH JUNK MAIL!

I got the family tree maker with the fewest CDs to get started and that turned out to be best, it let me sign up for the online data that I needed and not fumble with stuff that I might not need. (It also saved me some money.)

Unlike products with fancy graphic interfaces and colorful screens, the dumpy yellow interface doesn't even hint at the power of this application. Family Tree Maker allows me to record a tremendous amount of information, source citations and even record information that contradicts itself until I can get a definitive source.

The graphical charting and reporting are the best of the ones I've seen or tried, far more than I'll be able to use.

By far the most advanced feature of the product is their family finder report. This kind of smart searching saved me months of research by finding others working on my family lines, buy a copy of the CD and letting me contact them directly when they gave their permission to broderbund.

Their for-fee data sources are valuable and worth the price, free would of course be best, but I guess they aren't in business to do work for me and for free.

The product needs a face-lift to make it look more modern and the importing of data from other genealogy products can be slow, but this is still the hands-down best product.

I find all e-mail annoying so I went to their site and asked that it not be sent.

I believed the software magazine editors that this is a winner and am glad I did.

I've spent a great deal of time compiling Family genealogy notes and thought that this product would be much easier than using Word or Excel to organize and chart all my data. I was given an old copy of version 6 from a friend, but quickly saw that it was a very old interface with few features and little ability to import or export data to other Windows applications. I quickly upgraded to version 9 hoping to gain all the advantages of XP- an easy to use interface, etc. I installed this product three times thinking that it wasn't working and I was still using version 6. I finally checked the help menu for the version number and discovered that I was running version 9, but that it looked and behaved exactly as version 6!! The current version of this product is almost 10 years behind the current technology. If you're looking for an arcane way to enter information that can't be well displayed or organized, this is it; otherwise, I'd recommend you save the money for technologically superior method: a notepad and a pen. Shame on Broderbund for marketing old software in a new box.

Anyone into genealogy MUST begin with this software. It makes it so easy to record and organize your family files. Love the way it coordinates with Ancestry.com. Only negative is they don't write this software for MACs.