Family Tree Maker 2008 & 2009

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Back in 1989 Banner Blue released Family Tree Maker V1, and within a few years it became one of the leading Family Tree programs available. Each new version added requested features, more complex reporting functions, and even internet searching, and overall became more user-friendly. In September 2007, Ancestry.Com released Family Tree Maker 2008. The new version is has been completely redesigned, and has many new features, including the ability to find and import facts and historical documents on the Internet, and print custom-designed family trees and books.

The question remains, is it worth the upgrade for most people? Well I tried the Beta version, and then bought the full version of both 2008 and then upgraded to 2009 when it was released, and I thought I would share my experiences and views. Firstly the interface really needs a high-resolution larger monitor to display all the information clearly. My kids 19 inch LCD screen running at 1440x900 resolution is barely large enough to display all the data on the screen. Both FTM 2008 and 2009 really need a 21" monitor running at resolutions somewhere about 1680x1050 to display everything clearly.

I Have a fast PC, a Quad Core Q6600, with 4GB of RAM, and a number of fast SATA Hard Disks, but running the initial release of FTM 2008 made my PC feel like my old 486 that I threw out 5 years ago! After importing over 33,000 people, FTM 2008 went from a quick program to something painfully slow, taking seconds to change screens, and minutes to create some reports. The old FTM 2006 that I ran did the same things with no apparent lag at all. Part of the problem is that my family file increased from 29MB to over 80MB, just by importing it into the 2008 Version.

Ancestry realised that FTM was a total disaster, and quickly released patches to fix many of the issues that were slow, or simply missing. Register, NGS Quarterly and Ahnentafel reports were not there, book publishing was totally missing, and most reports had limited or no ability to be customised. FTM 2009 continued to get better, with many of the missing reports being added back, but many people felt they were still not as good as the old versions of FTM. Charts fell from 16 different charts in FTM 16 down to just 3 in FTM 2008, and about 9 in FTM 2009.

Now, 2 years after the absolutely horrid release of FTM 2008, and a year after the 2009 upgrade, the patches have made the program useable, but still behind the old V16 that I used and trusted. FTM 2010 has just been released and I have upgraded one PC at home with the new version, and so far it seems very stable, a bit faster, but after 2 years, I am still not sold on the new interface at all. The source handeling is finally where it should have been 2 years ago, but the whole program is still very web-oriented, and while I use some web sources, I dont go and blindly import sections of someones tree without first confirming the data it contains, but FTM allows, and seems to encourage just that way of doing your research.

Initially when 2008 came out I said forget it. FTM 2009 was a worthy upgrade if you dont mind slowing down data entry a bit, have a fast PC and like the new interface. FTM 2010 is finally going somewhere and is a worthy upgrade to most people out there.