Have you wondered whether you should bother to use a desktop genealogy program now that online family trees are popular and feature-filled? Folks ask me this all the time.
In today’s edition of the RootsMagic News (RootsMagic is a popular desktop program) an article by Renee Zamora appeared which discusses this and sums up the reasons why both are useful for genealogists. She gave her permission to reprint the article in the RootsMagic News, and provided a PDF version that is shareable. I liked it enough to share here. Check it out for yourself.
For the question of which desktop genealogy program is best, I always tell folks to download the trial version of programs they are interested in. Most of the major programs, such as RootsMagic, Legacy Family Tree, Ancestral Quest, and Family Tree Maker, have a free trial or basic version. The best program will be the one that feels most intuitive to you.
They all are powerful and are likely to have everything you could hope for, but it comes down to which one you will actually feel comfortable using. It doesn’t matter how robust a program is if you are overwhelmed or confused by it. So give them all a test-drive like I did, and settle on the one that feels best. I happen to use Legacy Family Tree because it suits the way I research and organize myself, but you may prefer one of the other excellent choices.
On Granny's Trail 