GenSoftReviews Choice Awards for 2017

Each year GenSoftReviews.com announces it Users' Choice awards. These awards are based on reviews provided by actual users of these genealogy programs. The winners for 2017 have just been announced.

What I find most interesting about these genealogy programs is that at least three of the top contenders are programs that have been discontinued and are no longer available from the original developers and are no longer supported. This has something to say about the overall quality of genealogy programs and the genealogists who use computer programs. The basic question is how can genealogists who are using computers continue to rate a program such as Personal Ancestral File that has now been discontinued for now going on 16 years? If you are wondering why there is such a mess in the online family trees, you just have to realize that one of the most popular genealogy programs is 16 years old and doesn't handle sources in any usable way. Two other discontinued programs that are highly rated are The Master Genealogist and Ancestry.com's now abandoned program Family Tree Maker.

It is also interesting to compare this last year's winners with the previous years. One example, Family Tree Maker is now being developed by MacKiev.com who obtained the rights to the program from Ancestry.com. The newest version of the program is rated well below any of the previous versions. You can search the list of all the reviews to see what the users think of the programs. If you have a favorite program, you may wish to submit a review.