Billy, your a good sport. I concur with you. I have been at this game only a few months (started in October last year). Initialy I started with the free stuff, because of my current situation. But eventualy I needed something more. I allow $20NZ per week for my hobby. (that's 6.3 GBP), so just enough for 30 credits which gives me plenty to work on. I realise for some that maybe alot (so make it a fortnighly amount or monthly amount) and others its peanuts. However its a lot cheaper than $100US sub to ancestory.com, or ordering English or New Zealand certs or paying a researcher. I think we with Scottish ancestors are pretty lucky. As to free stuff I can recomend the free BDM exchange, I post my downloaded certs there myself & encourage others to do so. It's worth a look. kind regards John Dods Wellington, New Zealand --- billy bravaal <billy.bravaal@btopenworld.com> wrote: > Hi Jean, > > I concur with your sentiments that > much is available without > payment, but surely the " I am not sure" syndrome > comes into the equation. > Certainly you can search the IGI ( > which is only an index ) and > scroll mailing lists but nothing beats having the > original certificate > displayed on your computer screen? > Take for example the original poster, > having a few credits > left on Scotlands People, I managed to uncover 4 > generations of his > ancestors in 2 hrs. Could the same be said for the > long trawl? > If you have dates for events in family > history, and yes > retrieve them from all available source's ( IGI, > mailing list ) you can do > no better than confirming them and the only way to > do that is the original > documents. > > regards > billy > > __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/