[or-roots] FTM

[Leslie Chapman]

I believe I am currently using FTM version 8 from somewhere in the previous millennium.  A number of years ago I did a comparison of it and Brother's Keeper and PAF the latter two being freebies at the time. To my eyes there was not a great deal of difference; I seem to remember some things like listing sources and a few other things were not real user friendly, but part of that may have been simply because I was more familiar with FTM.

That said I have heard an immense amount of criticism of Windows 8, I would caution anyone contemplating changing to that operating system that they may be very unhappy with it. My middle brother spends almost as much time swearing at it as he does repairing things that it has screwed up on my sister-in-law's computer. Naturally he at first assumed it was her fault, but has since determined that he can have all her programs working correctly on her computer and HE shuts it down and tomorrow HE turns it back on and most of her genealogy and many of the other programs she uses are once again FUBAR. Last time I watched him work with it I thought he was going to throw it thru the picture window.

We won't have 8 in our house, but everyone here is a nerd. 

I would point out that FTM is obviously one of the better written user environments; I migrated my original version from Windows 3.1 to Windows XP and as it moved along it took advantage of things like mouse-over hints and scroll wheels that hadn't been invented when it was released. As with any software I deplore the tendency to "reinvent the wheel." Of course I am not trying to support my family from the profits of selling "the latest greatest version" of whatever. But I really get irked when we have to have something "new" solely because somebody needs the money when it doesn't really offer any new advantages over the old version. I suspect most of you are like I am; you use the core of any software you have on your computer and 95%  of the bells and whistles you ignore because they either are not relevant to what you use it for or the learning curve is far too steep in comparison to the usefulness of the bell or whistle.

On a completely different topic Arcadia Publishing has just released "Myrtle Point and Vicinity: 1893 - 1950" an I believer one of the authors is related to cousin Phoebe.

Les C
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