Review by Steve B

This version of Family Tree Maker comes with a free, six-month membership to Ancestry.com, which is just about the right amount of time for the casual user to research and create a full family tree. Although you could do the research manually, Ancestry.com consolidates a tremendous amount of information from divers historical documents and makes it relatively easy and efficient to discover information about relatives from long ago.

Family Tree Maker Deluxe allows the user to create (and back-up) genealogy offline before submitting it online, so it’s my preferred method. You can work with your tree online, but by using the program on my home computer, then syncing when done, I avoid Internet glitches or user errors that cause lost data. So far, I haven’t encountered any problems with this software, or with synching.

With this version for Mac, you can capture photos with iSight and import them directly into your Ancestry.com tree. If you don’t own a scanner, this may be the best way to add pictures or copies of documents. Just make sure there is plenty of light for a clear picture.

Also included are the six reference training books on CD (see product description). I found them all useful; be sure to at least skim through them.

Family Tree Maker has been a good program for genealogy for years. I used it many years ago when it was just starting out and before it became PC-only. If you own a Mac, then I think you’ll appreciate that there is now a version for us. The features built in to this program make it much better than the first version I used, and I liked that one. Since it also comes with research training books (on CD) and a free six-month membership to Ancestry.com it becomes a great package at a decent price.