Why I buy this one ?
- Software for exploring, preserving, and sharing family history
- Build a family tree starting with names, dates, and events
- Attach photos, documents, and audio and video files
- Design and print charts to display at home and share with family
- Includes 1 month of premium access to ancestry.com

--caiman-- from FL, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $26.56 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

DALMAR Distributing offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $26.57 Usually ships in 3-4 business days

hermanstreet-music from UT, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $26.58 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Anything You Imagine offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $26.82 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Amazon.com offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $26.99 Usually ships in 24 hours

lakeplacegames offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $27.28 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

evercheap_media from PA, United States offers this stuff for:

Price : $28.93 Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Target.com/ITC offers this stuff with condition New, new for:

Price : $29.99 Usually ships in 2-3 business days

What our customer's say!

"Family Tree Maker 2008 Features Disappointing", I've been a faithful FTM user since 1992 and have had no problems or complaints with the product until now. In the years I've been using FTM I was able to create a book of my family history and either convert it to a PDF or text file for publishing. Now, FTM 2008 has done away with the book feature from previous versions and you are now limited to producing a book of a maximum of 250 pages through the Ancestry Press site. The book I created in FTM 16 was 1,300 pages and counting. I'm very disappointed that the book feature has been dropped in 2008 and I'm even sorrier that I wasted my money on this version. Going forward, I'll continue to use FTM 16 even though Ancestry will eventually stop supporting it. Before purchasing FTM 2008, and I wish I had followed my own advice, make sure that the features you used in a previous version are supported in FTM 2008 or you'll be disappointed as I've been.

"Family Tree Maker old data will not upload into Vista", Buyer beware. Research this product before buying. Be sure that your old data can be uploaded into the new program in your new computer running on Vista.

We've run the Family Tree Maker through several generations of computers and programs. But now our data in our old Family Tree Maker will not upload into into the new Family Tree Maker Program which we just installed in a new computer running Vista.

I am not a computer guru so don't know if Vista or the Family Tree Maker is at fault. The person who continually updates the data in our Family Tree Maker program was the person who tried and failed to update the old data in the Family Tree Program running on Vista.

Everyone knows that computers and programs are continually changed so people have to buy new programs when they get a new computer. Planned Obsolescence is a fact of life and it could be a factor here.

So we bought a new computer and a new Vista program and a new Family Tree Maker program. We're trying to play your game with you. But when we pay you for all these new programs don't you think we should at least be able to take our old data with us?

I welcome your advice and would also be glad go over what I have said above if it is not clear. I'm humble at humblefarmer dot com and I will come up in hundreds of places if you google The humble Farmer.

I'd be glad to give the new Family Tree Maker program five stars if you can tell me how to upload my old data into it.

The humble Farmer in Maine

"FTM 2008 after SP3 release", FTM 2008 is simple to use. For those familiar with FTM 16 or earlier version, it is different and unknown but think about the things you want to do and look around on the work area. FTM 2008 SP3 has improved its performance. While it is still not as fast as FTM 16, opening a file under XP is reported to be improved by 40%. Several individuals with 100,000 plus individuals state their performance has improved.

The Plan work area - is dedicated to all the various things you do with files or as FTM 2008 calls them, Trees. Data base statistics are there, All tasks (general and individual specific) are there. You can open additional trees in new windows. I've had as many as 4 trees open at one time. Need to go to some of the more common genealogy web sites - they're there.

People work area - is dedicated to individuals and their facts. For those familiar with FTM 16 - to work with individuals and facts, you needed the Index, Family View, Pedigree View, Edit Individuals (Facts, Notes), Scrapbook and Sources. In FTM 2008, you need only the Family tab (combination of Family view, input area, Index and Pedigree view). You can easily add a child, spouse or parent from this single work area. Want to add any fact to the selected individual, the default is to add Birth, Death and Marriage facts but you can "customize" the facts shown and include any or all on this work area and then you can add, edit or delete any information for any fact.

To work with all facts, you need the Person view (which lets you work with individual selected facts, you can see a timeline for the individual and you can see the immediate relationships with other family members. For Personal Notes, Media (Scrapbook) and Tasks are at the bottom.

For Facts - Notes and Media - available at the bottom of the right pane. Neither were available in FTM 16 and earlier. For Fact Sources - available at bottom of right pane. To add a fact Click the blue Plus icon. To delete a fact, Click the red X. To edit fact information, just type. No more having to open different dialog boxes. Want to see the father or mother's facts, just click the name at the top. No more having to close the Edit dialog, return to the Family view, select the parent name, click Edit to open the facts dialog box.

To Add or Delete an individual - one click on either the Family or Person work area.

Places work area - is dedicated to managing all place names within one work area. You can see a list of all places in the data base, map any selected place name using MicroSoft's Virtual Earth, Add/Edit/Delete a place name from one work space. You can also see every individual and fact linked to the Place name.

Media work area - is dedicated to managing all media items within one work area. You can see thumbnails of all items linked to all individuals and facts in the data base. You are told where the item is stored (path) and file name. You can add/edit/remove the caption and description without opening additional dialog boxes or menu options. Want to see who and what is linked to a media item, switch to the Detail work area. You can view the image, select different zoom levels, rotate the image, see all individuals/facts/source-citations linked to the image. Want to rename an image file, select the media item, click the right mouse button and select Rename. Want to provide the story behind the image, write it in the Media Notes area (1 mb). All from 2 work areas which can be easily opened.

Sources work area - is dedicated to managing all Source-citations within one work area. You can group the source-citations by All, Source Title, Repository, Person and the Source-citations for the selected group are displayed in the top center pane. Add/Delete/Link/Unlink all from one area. Make changes if you want. Link to multiple individuals/facts, add a note, and link a media image.

As a safe guard, to work with Source Titles, you need to open a special dialog box. To do this Click File, Manage Sources. The separate dialog window lets you work with the Source title (same thing as the old Master Source).

Publish work area - consolidates all reports and charts in one work area. They are grouped into different categories. Just click on a group title and see the individual reports/charts. Or you can also preview the report/chart. Here is a list of reports/charts available in FTM 2008 SP3:
Charts - Pedigree Chart, Descendant Chart, Hourglass Chart, Relationship Chart, Vertical Pedigree Chart
Genealogy Reports - Register and Ahnentafel Reports
Person Reports - Individual Report, Custom Report, Research Note Report, LDS Ordinances, Task List
Relationship Reports - Famiy Group Sheet, Kinship Report, Marriage Report, Parentage Report, Outline Descendant Report (SP3 updates this so you can now include any fact to the report)
Place Reports - Place Usage Report
Media Reports - Media item, Photo Album, Media Usage Report
Source Reports - Source Usage Report, Source Bibliography, Documented Facts
Books - Ancestry.Press is all that is currently available, Sadly desk top book publishing has not yet been included.
You can now save cherished charts and reports for reuse at a later time. So you can format a chart/report - get it to looking just the way you like, include the select individuals and save it.

Web Search work area - extremely flexible. In FTM 16 you had to close the web search window and use the Family View to navigate to a new individual. Not so with FTM 2008, Click on a name at the top of the work area or use the Index (the Index card icon). If you change the search individual and click People work area, that individual's record is opened.

In fact you can click between any of the work areas at the top of the window and you are taken to the same information displayed when you left the work area. The exception is as I said you change the focus individual, you are taken to that individual's record in the People work area.

I jump around checking data, viewing what I was working with earlier. No more paging sequentially through all of the last views. The transfer is immediate. It is just like having multiple windows open on your desktop and switching from one program to another.

There are areas which still need to work but


"Family Tree Maker 2008", As an avid user of Family Tree Maker for over 10 years, I am less than satisfied with this new product. Software makers continually strive to reinvent the wheel, even after perfection has been achieved. In this case, the new package has transformed the round wheel into a square one. The old familiar format was too good to last; now multiple features appear on one page, causing fonts to appear small. It is no longer possible to change views to access familiar operations; In my opinion, Family Tree Maker has killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

"Not compatible with Microsoft", We have been unable to install this on a basic Windows XP system. The Ancestry Technical Support people told me it was a Microsoft problem and their support people needed to fix it! - but it is supposed to be compatible with Microsoft XP.... It is too bad, because I really like [...] and wanted something compatible. Very disappointed. Will have to look at something else. I should have read these reviews before purchasing it.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"FTM 2008 is poor", Product is stinko plus I think there is a glitch in my software. I plan to go to ver 16, (currently using 10.0)

someone mentioned returns. How?

"Family Tree Maker Essentials", Product arrived promptly and was exactly what I needed to upgrade my existing Family Tree to run under Vista. So far it's performed flawlessly and has a greatly improved user interface. Very nice.

"Don't purchase this product", I agree with all the negative comments regarding this product. I own FTM 16 and decided to upgrade to FTM 2008. What a mistake. So many of the features that made FTM a superior product have been removed from FTM 2008. One feature I used all of the time was the "calendar" feature. I would print out the month which showed people in my FTM who had birthdays, anniversaries, etc. so I would remember to send them a card. That no longer exists. I prefer to know where all the files are on my computer. My FTM 16 data file is 23mb, but the converted FTM 2008 file is 3mb so I know that 20mb is being stored somewhere and I don't know where. After using FTM 2008 for a couple of weeks I uninstalled it from my computer and will continue to use FTM 16. I won't be selling my copy of FTM 2008 on Amazon because I don't want anyone else to go through the headaches I have.

"slow - slow - slooooooow ", I was determined I wanted to switch to this program because I had heard good things about it for years. Boy, did I pick the wrong year to decide this. The program is extremely slooooooow. Click one thing and wait, wait for the screen catch up and to allow you to enter what you wanted to enter. My previous program that I switched from had basically the same amount of data and handled it so well that I didn't know how good I had it. Now it takes excruciating patience to do anything with this program. Be smart -- don't buy it.

"FTM 2008 is not worth buying", I have a Dell XPS 420 with dual 3GB processors and 4GB of ram. In other words my computer should have plenty of processing power to run any software on the market. Moving between the individual fields takes forever and then the program will stop responding. If the user waits, the program will just open numerous windows. The technician told me to break my file into smaller chunks and to turn off the fast fields. I'm sticking with my 2005 version.