I just started using this within the last 24 hours, and thought I'd share some observations and see whether what I'm seeing is accurate, or if there are other tips to use.
(This is all in reference to FTM 2009 sp1)

First off, let me say, that in general, I think I like the program, even with the upcoming nitpicks.

1- I had started a tree on ancestry.com prior to picking up FTM 2009. I did a gedcom export from ancestry.com and imported that into FTM 2009. On initial glance, everything was there. On looking at the log file, apparantly, ancestry.com writes out gedcom data that is in a format that FTM 2009 decides is invalid. Lots of these lines: Line 1998: error 4 : Invalid tag: MARR. Line ignored.
Seems like one would expect the data flow between 2 products from Ancestry to work cleanly.

Looks like there was some data corruption from importing as well, as I have people in the 1800's that had source references to WWII service data.

So, I gave up, and basically started over, using the ancestry.com tree as a basis for data entry and forcing it to find the appropriate source records that I had on the web. So far, so good.

2- I found that when in the websearch and looking for hints, that if you doubleclick on a field in the search engine, it highlights the text (as expected), but you can't type into it then. I have to single click in order to get the cursor in the text box, and then I can backspace to clear the field. Not sure why that is, seems counterintuitive.

3- FTM and ancestry.com handle census records differently. ancestry.com definitely does a better job. FTM seems to sometimes omit handling relatives within the same household and/or doesn't know how to handle some relatives (e.g. a father-in-law). Sometimes it didn't understand parents either, other times it did.

4- The ancestry.com hints is a great feature. Just wish that since you could have a lengthy list, that the program would either shade/highlight the hints that were already processed (either merged or ignored), so you don't lose your place in the list.

5- When merging data, it'd be nice if there was an option to manually enter data to 'fix' a piece of bogus data vs. needing to re-edit the person later on.

6- The hint leaves show up in the tree. It'd be nice if there were an icon in the person index list. Seems like it should be easy enough to do, there are special icons for when a person is bookmarked

7- There are moments when the screen display seems to shudder and then it clears up. Not sure if this is related to it searching the web and redrawing the screen for any expected 'hints', or if it's something else.

8- Reporting seems to be the weakest area in the program. I know the update that just came out improved on it, but I'd still have to consider it needing significant progress. Especially when compared to the upcoming RootsMagic4 release.


Anyhow, that's my initial thoughts/observations. Like I said, I do like the program, and there's alot to it that I haven't gotten into yet and look forward to that. Just would enjoy seeing some of those items addressed in a future update.

Thanks,
Erick