I've used TMG 6 & 7 (haven't yet upgraded to 8). I've also got FTM 11 (not 12, which requires .NET 4).
I've used TMG for several year, partly because I feel some sort of perverse obligation to -- its reputation as being the tool of choice for all the "serious genealogists" nags me that using anything less makes me just another amateur
.
On the one hand, I like the fact that TMG is so in-your-face about the serious work of genealogy. It helps me to stay on top of my sourcing, keeping my (offline) data organized, and so forth. In short, my work is much the better for it. And the membership discussion list is one of the most helpful, friendly and expert I've come across. There's always a fast and friendly answer available, and I've never caught so much as a whiff of condescension toward us blue-collar genealogists.
However, I've always tended to get lost in TMG's complexities -- not necessarily of the software itself, but of the nitty-gritty of the high-powered research it is best suited to. Things like formatting of source references, choosing (and sticking with! second-guessing myself is one of my worst character traits) a particular place-name hierarchy, and developing all those rules for report generation seem to sap so much of my time that actually getting anything productive done slows to a crawl. I've planned, replanned, started, and re-started building my databases with TMG so often that I'm about ready to throw in the towel on it. And the TMG discussion forums are chalk full of "What's the best way to do this?" queries. Which reflects both the comprehensivity and the complexity of TMG; one rarely has to ask, "Can TMG do this?" (of course it can!). But there are so many ways to accomplish any given task that it drives the second-guesser in me up a wall ("Well, you just need to decide for yourself." AACK!!)
And the author of TMG has drawn a firm line in the sand: TMG is a *genealogy* tool, not a family history package. Sure, it can be made to handle things like adoptions and same-sex relationships, but it's often klunky, and the author is clear he's not interested in making it any easier. So if you're a family historian, there may be a few gotchas hiding away in TMG.
I've also been experimenting more with FTM recently. Aside from the eye-candy (compared to the starkness of TMG, it's beautiful to look at; and yes, I'm not ashamed to admit that's important to me), one of FTM's biggest selling points for me is its integration with Ancestry.com. I've heard others complain all those waving leaves all over their trees is annoying, but for me they're still an invitation to further exploration (and too often I wander so far off the trail I never find my way back). But at the price Ancestry.com charges for subscriptions, I think they should be giving FTM away to members. AT $120 a year ($200+ for world subscription) one would think they could easily afford to absorb the $15 or $20 they make on FTM.
One of my biggest concerns is data portability. TMG's ability to import from just about any genealogy software is a big plus -- *if* 'm migrating *to* TMG. But there seems to be no good way to get my data out of TMG, except to rely on GEDCOM, which is (as someone else mentioned in this thread) "lossy". I don't want to invest heavily in TMG if much of my work is stuck there.
I'm not sure whether the same is true of FTM (anyone want to comment?), as I haven't seriously tried yet. Currently, all my online trees are at Ancestry.com, anyway, so the issue hasn't surfaced for me.
My current work is involving mass data entry from single sources -- e.g., I have a family genealogy on my Bartsch/Richter ancestry put together by a Sr. Cecelia Bartsch back in the '80s. Having to manually re-enter the same source information for every fact, event, and person is -- to put it mildly -- tedious. I see TMG8 has a spreadsheet-like entry screen for that kind of stuff. I haven't located anything similar in FTM yet, but it may be there.
I'd also like to toss out [edit: I mean "toss out for consideration", not "toss out with the garbage"
] The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding. I've used TNG in the past to put up personal websites (and I see it's what's used here at BSGR), and there's a fair number of folks who use it as their only genealogy software. I'm considering putting up a self-hosted site, and want to go with TNG again. However, I want to integrate it with a wiki and, possibly, a forum, and there's a fair number of hurdles to overcome on that. I've also looked at Webtrees, but it has the same integration hurdles to overcome, and the attitude of the developers seems to be more adamantly "we're not interested in integration". Though Darryl Lythgoe at TNG is too busy to do the work himself, he at least seems interested in working with those who are trying to integrate, which makes me want to stay with TNG.
Anyone have any comments on online sitebuilding?
Finally, my OS of choice is Linux. So while I'm using FTM and TMG, I have to run them in virtual Windows sessions. I'd like to replace them with something Linux native, or at least something that runs under Wine, but the best the Linux world has to offer is GRAMPS which is, to be charitable, a little behind FTM and TMG.
--Nathanael
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Submit your GEDCOM to the BlackSeaGR database and it will be visible to the whole world (through Google) AND people can contact you and see the information for free. To be fair even though Ancestry trees default to members only, they apparently have a setting that allows you to make your tree viewable to the public. The public still can't contact you but they can see your tree.