Here are some of my thoughts on Ancestry type sites and genealogy programs, after doing this for decades and having accumulated well over 10,000 ancestral connections, hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of documents, maps, historical records and photos. They are all organized in about fifteen 2" to 5" binders in addition to the computer databases. Do not use any genealogy database that requires the support of some online company. I, and tens of thousands of others, have used "Brother's Keeper" for years with no problems what so ever. You will be able to pass it along to your kids with all your data and it will work, as long as they are using the Windows format. In addition to exporting and importing GED files, it also can output reports in RTF, usable by any one, with almost any type of word processor. I have never found anything on Ancestor that I did not have already, mostly for free, from somewhere else, with one exception. People post their family trees on Ancestry to share them and one can sometimes find new info from those trees. The problem is, that it's usually no thanks to Ancestry, but to their individual paying customers. In other words, they let you upload your info, that you have likely worked hard to get, sometimes for years, then sell access to that info to others. Some one-name-study sites won't give their members total access to their database for fear they will post it on Ancestry. There is a lot of personnel info in genealogy databases, especially in the "Notes" section, that has no business being in commercial hands. Its also disrespectful to some of the people in the database who may not want all of their info out there for the world to see or misuse. Be sure, no matter what program you use, to print-out all of the info, in the many of the different types of reports that are usually available. Those hard copies can be invaluable. I prefer to use the Registry Report as it will show all the details and notes, from what ever ancestor you chose to start with, up until the present. I print them out from the beginning of dozens of family lines, put them in sheet covers and then into labelled and indexed binders. When ever I make significant updates or corrections to that line, I do a new print-out. It also facilitates adding maps, photos, etc, also in sheet protectors, to the database printout. If you have thousands of names in your database, be sure to print-out an index to all reports. Those indexes can be invaluable. Hope this helps some of you. Douglas Geddes Ontario, Canada