Hi Friends, I read with interest all the comments about genealogy software. Good subject and it is great to gather information from several sources who have hands-on experience. I was dismayed to hear that there may be programs out there that do not generate or accept GEDCOM files. The LDS Church came up with this conversion method so that regardless of the type of program you may be using, you could share or receive information in a compatible form. If you have ever submitted information to the LDS Church, you would have done it via a GEDCOM file. Any program that forces you to keep an old hard drive as a means of preserving information or going to hours of work to re-enter information into a new program is not a good program. I regularly generate a GEDCOM file as a means of backing up my genealogy work; this is also the form used to upload the information to my World Connect site. And a GEDCOM file is the best method to share information with others who have genealogy software. If you haven't mastered the GEDCOM file, take a moment to do so. It is very easy to do on Family Tree Maker and several other programs that I have heard about. Once a week I burn a CD as a backup and stick it in our safe (Heritage Safe, by the way!) for safe keeping. You can also use a floppy or zip disc, depending on the size of your database. I have about 13,000 names in my database and it takes less than 2 minutes to do. I use a CD to update genealogy work on my laptop -- helpful when I am traveling or in an out of the way library somewhere. I cannot imagine the heartbreak of losing years of family history because of a hard drive crash. Like all work done on a computer, back up, back up, back up!! Good luck, Lonna Jean