The biggest problem with Family Origins is that it was discontinued earlier this year and is no longer available. Why discuss a program that's toast? There are all sorts of insights buried here ... 
  
Before Windows, I spent a couple of days using DOS-based Brother's Keeper back in late 1980s, then "got serious" about genealogy a couple of years later while using DOS-based PAF. Neither supported sources or book generation. In  early 1995 I went on a massive hunt for something better.

"Better" meant Windows-based. (A given today, but not then.) It also meant (by my personal standards) -- facilities for handling sources, and the ability to produce a book. (Later I would add web site creation, PDF creation, photo handling and video facilities to my shopping list.)

I looked at every program on the list to the right that existed back then, including Family Tree Maker (with its would-be book publishing features), and many others that have since been discontinued. (Anyone remember Kin & Kith, Roots III, Roots IV, Roots V, Visual Roots, Family Gathering, Family Tree, or Ultimate Family Tree?)

I found a very powerful and confusing program with a $399(US) price tag. I also found (and adopted) Family Origins for $35(Cdn). (The price was subsequently cut.)

Family Origins wasn't perfect -- some screen fonts weren't scalable, for example. (No small factor for those without 20/20 vision.) But in the main, based on power, flexibility, speed, ease of use and price, it had my name all over it. Family Origins became my genealogy program of choice and I became its local evangelist.

A couple of years later the genealogy software market heated up, with ever-bigger firms gobbling up marketing rights to every program in sight. Family Origins was once marketed by four "owners" in a single year.

It's marketing rights ended up in the hands of Genealogy.com which left it to die on the vein while Genealogy.com marketed the heck out of its market leader: Family Tree Maker.

Family Origins remains a personal favorite and I would be recommending it still today except it has been discontinued.

Unable to re-purchase Family Origins' marketing rights, its author (who continues to support Family Origins users even though there is no money in it) started over again, determined to write an even better program.

That new product is called RootsMagic. We'll pick up this story on our RootsMagic page.