Ancestral Quest's big claim to fame is its unique online collaboration feature, which allows others to edit pages you upload to an Ancestral Quest Internet server.

AQ's Sourcing is wonderful. Users can tie a source to an entire fact (say a marriage) or just part of it (such as the date or place), which is handy when the obituary or cemetery stone tells just half the story. The Master Genealogist and Brother's Keeper are currently the only other programs to get so specific. (Specific is good.)

Ancestral Quest also provides a multimedia scrapbook that allows users to  attach photos, scanned documents, audio clips, and video clips for each individual. Most genealogy programs do this. But for the more adventurous, Ancestral Quest goes further, allowing you to choreograph a slide show that can include background audio such as narration.

Of course audio and video will not fit on paper, so to share your slideshow you will have to distribute your genealogy on CD-ROM or over the Internet. But within those constraints, suddenly your genealogy has gone Hollywood.

Ancestral Quest shines when it comes to printing, especially charts. Book printing options include print to a WordPerfect wpd file, as well as print to a Word rtf file.

AQ will also create web pages -- with or without your multimedia scrapbook. There's a sample at:  http://www.ancquest.com/sample.

The program also simplifies Internet searches for your ancestors. Just highlight a name in your database then search a list of Internet search engines for that name.

Despite its ease of use, Ancestral Quest includes all the features a veteran genealogists expect. It retails for $40(US) and is available for download at http://www.ancestralquest.com. There is a demo of Ancestral Quest on the Workshop CD.

By almost any standard, Ancestral Quest 2002 is worth a look.