Family Tree Maker is genealogy's best selling program. It won an Editor's Choice award from PC Magazine last year, is easy to use and costs only $30(US) -- although it is frequently bundled with various collections of American genealogy data on CD for higher prices.

Genealogy.com has done a great job at marketing this program. This is the only genealogy program found in most stores. 

Family Tree Maker does a great job of printing family trees. Charts are its specialty. It also has a nice Map feature that will show your ancestors' immigration pattern. I haven't seen anything like it anywhere else.

So why don't I like Family Tree Maker? After all, I usually recommend market leaders, and FTM certainly qualifies.

In the beginning (several years ago) the then-current version did a very poor job of printing books. I had to buy a copy of FTM to learn how sad it was.

Today FTM's book publishing features are better (although they don't compare well with competitors' offerings). But as the program's book publishing improved, the size of my database exploded, and FTM slowed to a crawl. Be forewarned: Those with large families (or lots of information about smaller families) will be happiest either running FTM on an really fast PC or choosing another genealogy program.

But today my biggest gripe with FTM is something else. And it is a doozer that has little to do with how the program works.

One of FTM's biggest features (novices think it is "great") is how the program interacts with all the genealogy data that Genealogy.com has online. (Never mind that it is mostly U.S.-oriented junk, and rents for an additional subscription fee.) 

As useless as that is for many of us, it is harmless I guess. Unfortunately, the second part isn't. 

Part Two in a nutshell, is that Genealogy.com will happily provide you at no charge a place to upload your genealogy data for them to display to others. Sound good? It's not ...

Unlike virtually every other program out there, Family Tree Maker doesn't generate HTML web pages that you could upload to the web site of your choice (your own or mine), or that you could distribute on CD-ROM.

All Family Tree Maker users can do is upload their data to Genealogy.com. What's wrong with that? How long have you got? Read on...

Specifically, read the legally-binding User Agreement displayed when you start to upload your data: 

By creating a User Home Page, whether through the Family Tree Maker software or through the Web site located at www.familytreemaker.com, you acknowledge and agree that all or part of a User Home Page you put together, including any family tree information, may become part of an online archive that other users of Genealogy.com’s products or services can access, view and search. Such content may also become part of a database that may be reproduced by Genealogy.com in any format, in whole or in part, including without limitation in an electronic storage format, such as CD-ROM or DVD or an online subscription, for distribution, sale, or any other purpose.

In case that is not clear enough for you, Genealogy.com also explains it another way:

By creating a User Home Page, you grant Genealogy.com and its affiliated companies a royalty free, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, transferable, worldwide license to use, copy, sublicense, adapt, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, archive, and display any such User Home Page (or part thereof) in any medium now known or hereafter developed.

In other words, your data becomes their legal property. You can still do whatever you want with it, but so can Genealogy.com. You surrender all exclusive rights. Period. If you don't believe me that's a bad idea, show this page to your lawyer and get a professional's opinion. I did.

One tiny, tiny example of how bad this is: One lady uploaded her data to Genealogy.com then realized it included errors. She is still waiting for the errors to disappear from Genealogy.com products. Buy the right bundle, and you too will pay for her errors (potentially in more ways than one). Her sister did, to the lady's embarrassment

Book generation not up to my needs, software that slows as your data grows, and a User Agreement best left alone. It has all left a very bad taste in my mouth. There is no demo of this version on the Workshop CD -- or anywhere else.

That said, the program works, and has a reasonably full set of modern features (except web site creation). If the foregoing doesn't discourage you, go for it. The current promotional bundle includes a manual and Getting Starting video.