Cheri Mello uses The Master Genealogist so I asked her to comment on what she thought about the software: If you are in the market to switch genealogy software, you may want to check out the Genealogy Report Card. It is no longer updated. However, software programs (that are still in existence) have kept their strengths over the years. You can view it here: www.mumford.ca/reportcard The overall report can be found here: http://www.mumford.ca/reportcard/basechtoverall.html For those who want something pretty easy to learn, I suggest Family Tree Maker (FTM) or Personal Ancestral File (PAF). FTM has lots of upgrades to their program every year and lots of accessory CDs for you to buy. PAF has had no upgrades in the past 5(?) years and will not have any in the future. PAF is published by the LDS church and they are no longer supporting the program. I think they are looking into doing an online type genealogy software. For those who want free, there is PAF (in the above paragraph). Just remember it's no longer a supported program. There is also Legacy, which has two versions. The standard edition (free) and the deluxe version. Legacy has a basic interface and isn't too hard to use for the standard birth-marriage-death stuff. For those who are pretty comfortable with computers and want a program that can do it all and you can customize it somewhat, there's "The Master Genealogist." If you are transferring from another genealogy program, TMG can read the info directly and import it without a Gedcom. If you are starting out, the basic birth-marriage-death stuff isn't too bad. But if you want to use all the bells and whistles, TMG has quite a large learning curve. I think I've used TMG for about 10 years. At the time I bought it, I wanted a program that I wouldn't "outgrow." I also needed a program that could take at least a 19 character field complete with diacritics (non-English letters). Only one program could do that at the time, and that was TMG. However, your criteira might be different for choosing a program than mine. My criteria has changed over the years and TMG still meets my criteria. I suggest you look at the Genealogy Report Card and decide which features are the most important to you. Download the horse-and-pony show and try it out. See if your local genealogy society has any Users Groups where you could talk to others who use the program. One more note on TMG: Although it can print out in multiple languages, Portuguese is not one of them at this time. But it's in the works. Also TMG doesn't constantly upgrade their program (I think it's been 2 years). Yes they update, but not upgrade (For those who may not be familar....upgrade is when a developer goes from version 1.0 to verion 2.0 (or like from Windows XP to Windows Vista) and there is a fee but and update is when the developer sends patches, bug fixes, etc out which is version 1.1 to 1.2 (or like when Windows XP had to send out Service Pack 1 & 2 (SP1 & 2). Those are free). Also, TMG tech support is in MD. One of the tech support guys is part Madeiran too! Sincerely, Cheri Mello Azores Genealogy & TMG User