This can be an expensive hobby, so I take advantage of free stuff whenever possible. OpenOffice and FastStone come immediately to mind. And while that doesn’t mean I never pay for anything, it does mean I take full advantage of free trials and make *sure* it’s going to do what I want it to do before I shell out any cash. This is one reason I’ve never used RootsMagic or The (now defunct) Master Genealogist. Most of the functionality I want to use is disabled in the free version of RootsMagic, so there’s no way to test it (and I just tried it again recently). As for TMG, with its hefty price tag, I wasn’t going to pay for it if I couldn’t figure out how to use it. And I couldn’t.

I continue to struggle with organization. For one thing, I can’t seem to find a system that “does . . . [Yes! There’s more!]