Customer Reviews

Personal Historian Software

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

 

 

This program comes with a small but effective word editor. On the left panel of the screen there are a series of statements or questions meant to joggle your memory about past events.

When you enter the persons birthdate, the series of questions are customized for the life span of the person. The questions and categories containing the questions can be customized.

Photos can be added to the records.

When you've finished entering your data, the program will generate a report that can be printed, saved in RTF format or saved as a PDF.

Requests in the forum are for a table of contents and an index. Neither of these are available now.

If you have a genealogy program, much of the data can be imported using GEDCOM. The program will read data from a ROOTS MAGIC data base directly.

This program has some nice features for organizing one's personal history and story. The lists of events, music and other important happenings by date is extremely useful for establishing the time period when a personal life event took place. The program is worth the price for helping you to organize your thoughts when you write your personal memoir.

I am a quadriplegic who needed something more than a diary or journal. I felt a need to be autobiographical - - like, who knows? Maybe I'll write a book! THE PERSONAL HISTORIAN suited my needs just perfectly! THE PERSONAL HISTORIAN is genius in the manner in which it prompts memories from 25, 30, years ago with culturally relevant events. It also has a much more than adequate diary capability (for all that daily kvetching!).

I really dig the way it works so seamlessly with my voice recognition program (for a person who cannot use their arms, a voice recognition program is indispensable!).

This review is based on assessment of the evaluation version of the software. I love the idea of the program. It provides a platform in which to record a personal journal and life time-line, and to place it in the context of world events. The package seems easy to use and has "time capsule" import options that enable you to import events in (e.g.) US or British history and display them alongside your own entries. There is also a genealogy import option (which I haven't tested). So far so good.

However, the program seems dated and poorly supported. There hasn't been a software update in 2 years. The "FAQ" section of the company's homepage contains just one single entry, the "Forums" page contains no messages at all, and the "Join the mailing list" link is broken. Also, the time capsules mentioned above are evidently not being updated, e.g. the most recent event listed in US history is 9/11. Incredibly, the most recent event listed in British history is the Falklands war, almost 30 years ago. All this leads me to speculate that the program is poorly supported, if at all, and is likely to soon become obsolete, so it doesn't seem like a good investment of time or money. Too bad. Hopefully something better will come along to replace it - perhaps a journal version of Google Calender? That would be nice.

On a more positive note, the program does have the ability to export data into a spreadsheet, which could presumably be imported into another program down the road (however, you do need to purchase the software for this to work, it is not available with the free evaluation version that I tested).

The software is good for logging your topics or thoughts until you have time to elaborate. But it seems to be a very simple software and I'm not sure the price tag is worth it.

There is a concept of 'time capsules' which are usually events in history, by date over a period of time, contained in a file. So, for instance there could be one for 18th century as an example, in which case, all the major events are listed and you can import them into your story. This would be interdispursed in your story along with the dates that you enter. It helps see the events that could have impacted your ancestors. However, it advertises that there are 'time capsules' ready for you to import and that there will be more. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are some, but not many and I haven't seen a new one forever... if you're lucky, a user will produce one that you can use and post it. I created one for Italian History. It is flexible enough to allow you to create one on a spreadsheet to use for importing.

I'm not really impressed, given the cost.

This lets me organize the info I put together,it is stored in one place.