Review by 12XU

I’m new to the the whole genealogy search game, but I’ve been intrigued by the Ancestry.com ads for quite a while - just unwilling to plunk down the cash for a membership. So it was a real pleasure to get my mitts on this software.

The software itself is fairly easy to use; enter information about yourself and your immediate relations and you’re off and running. The included 6 month subscription to the website obviously makes searching for information far easier that contacting every known relative, but it’s by no means a magical and automated process. I found myself contacting most of my relatives to pump them for knowledge - had I not, I would have hit more than a few brick walls.

But that’s part of the fun, and now I’ve got a flock of people waiting to hear about updates and progress. I’ve also got people contacting me with changes and forgotten information. All to the good, I say.

Really, the only downside here is the potential to get sucked into it for long periods of time. Plus, it’s the kind of thing that never feels finished - there’s always more to find, always more data, photos and documents to uncover and include. It could easily be the kind of project someone could work on for many years. So if you’re the kind of person that wants to get it finished and put it away, this is not the thing for you.

But if you’re someone that wants to start a journey that can last a while, that wants to reconnect with family, that wants to do a little work to find out just where you come from, it’s a great time. Just be sure that when you start, you have the time to commit to getting a bunch done: once you activate your subscription you’ve got 6 months before you have to start re-upping. Which frankly makes me think that right now (the holidays) may be the perfect time to start working with it; between some time off and all the family get-togethers, I know I’m going to expand my knowledge base over the next few weeks.