Product Reviews

This BBC2 TV programme tie-in is really Family Tree Maker (FTM) 2006, which is now two versions old. The current version is 2008, reviewed below. We're reviewing this older version here because it's the last one to include the full printing and presentation features that helped to make FTM a best seller for several years and still the best version available to UK users.

The default Family screen shows husband and wife with their children and parents, plus buttons to summon the editing screen, extra spouses, media scrapbook and a web search for your ancestors. Almost every field lets you assign the source of its data. There's no provision for photos in

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this view, though.

Its wide range of charts, trees and reports includes all-in-one pedigree, hourglass, ancestor, descendant timelines and family group sheets. Some of these can be embellished with pictures, colours, fonts and borders.

Family Tree Maker pioneered the creation of Family Books, where you compile your own 'book' complete with a table of contents, an index, source and location lists, and a choice of almost all the charts and reports. You can optionally incorporate your own text or scanned items, plus FTM's unique, paginated, indexed, drop-line descendant charts.

To use FTM to the full, you'll need an internet connection for registering the program and unlocking your free 30-day subscription to Ancestry.co.uk, which has 800 million records online. You can share your family tree by uploading it to Ancestry's collection of user-submitted trees, but you then lose control - and ownership - of that tree.

A guide to getting started and a user manual are included. You also get family trees and video excerpts of the celebrities from all three TV series and a training video on DVD. Considering that this costs half as much as Family Tree Maker 2008, it's clearly the best choice for tracing your family's history.