If anyone wants to try a program without making a big investment you can usually find the last year's (not the latest) edition at a software outlet on the Internet. A caution about purchasing software off Ebay. If it is not in a box or a certified OEM version that can be registered it will probably turn out to be a pirated copy. There is no guarantee it will work and the pirates usually will not refund your money, they will only promise a new disk if one does not work. Be sure anything you buy at Ebay says you can register it. If there is a caveat that it cannot be registered you can be pretty sure it is sold by a pirate. Some Ebay vendors also sell multiple licenses for software so it can be installed on several computers. My husband and I each have our own systems and we have a laptop for conferences. We also keep a very old PC for guests to use to collect email when they visit (we don't have to worry about them collecting a virus that will damage one of the other systems that way). So we really need at least 2 licenses for each new software package. We only need 2 because more recent editions of many programs allow you to install them on 2 systems -- the makers recognize that many people now have laptops as well as home systems. I have seen FTM delux 2005 for $19.95 at one of the software outlets I use. That is not a big savings over the $29.95 price for the 2006 version ($49.95 for the program with some data disks) but in the case of other programs the savings can be very substantial. In another few months that vendor may have a clearance on FTM 2005 and the price may be cut in half. I have been able to purchase several programs I wanted from that vendor for less than $10 and have seen FTM in older versions at that price -- in the box with manual and data. Since FTM sells a lot of their data DVDs in separate packages, you really don't need to get a super-duper box with everything in it. Some of the databases may not interest you at all. If you get a data disk of something like the SSDI it would be important to get the latest one. But if you want other data that already includes the years that interest you (like a US census), its publication date may not be that important. If you buy the $49.95 package make sure that the data disks in it are the ones you need. If not, it may be better to look for those disks as a separate purchase from some of the genealogy CD outlets before buying from FTM. Most software outlet vendor sites let you sign up for email notices of specials which is a good idea if you like to stay up on what is about to go out of date. They also have a lot of special programs that you may not learn about elsewhere. I have the Oxfored English - Duden's pop up dictionary program that I found in an outlet email. It lets me do a quick search for a German word right on my system. You have to know enough German to figure out what the root words are within some of the words you want to translate but that does not take very long to learn. In some cases the dictionary has various forms of a verb so you do not have to know the infinitive form. If that pop up dictionary interests you, search the web with "Oxford-Duden dictionary". I believe MyFamilySoftware.com is one vendor that has it. Internet outlets also have a search engine for you to enter the name of a program you want so it is easy to learn comparative pricing from one vendor to another. You can find any number of them with Internet searches using combos like, "computer software outlet" " software factory outlet" "computer outlet" "software warehouse" or others that would stand for clearance of overstocks from other vendors. Not all their software is outdated. Sometimes they have current stock from companies that went out of business or did not accept an order. If you buy an outdated version of software, after testing it you can go to the websites with the information about the current year's upgrades available and what features may have been improved or what extras are in the box and decide if it is worth getting. After you once have a program installed and registered (it does not matter where you got the program) you can usually get the next year's program in the upgrade version for less than the new program for that same year. In some cases I have skipped a year and then installed an upgrade after 2 years and still realized significant savings. If you use an outlet website for nothing more than to compare prices with sale prices in local stores, it is still good information. Postage from those places is usually minimal and sometimes shipping is free so be sure you know the final cost of a given program before deciding where to purchase it. The disks from outlets usually arrive in 7-10 days or earlier if you request faster shipment. One type of software that some more-experienced computer users know about is the OEM versions of various popular programs. These versions usually come with a new computer and they do not have a manual with them. All you get is the disk, not the box. A typical OEM program in a new system package will be virus protection from McAffee or Symantec (Norton). Another is a CD & DVD burner program that will come with a system that has a disk writer. I recently found a popular CD-DVD burner program that is $72 list price for $22 at one outlet. It was in the box with manual. It is a program I have been using for years and I don't believe I need the manual to be able to use the program features I need so that is not all that important to me. If you are burning music or video CDs or DVDs then a manual can be a great help. The popular program is the same on the LDS has on their microfilm digitizers at the FHCs. If you have a CD-DVD burner on your system you still have to have that program in order to read the files you copy to CD at an FHC. The alternative is to "close" the CD on which you have made copies of microfilms so the disk can be read on any system. When you do that you may not be able to add to the CD on future visits - you may have to use a new CD every time. Karen