RootsMagic UK v4 (or RM4 for short) is family history software in a UK edition, published in two bundles - Standard and Platinum - plus a single-disc Upgrade. The program is the same in each case; only the extras differ.

The Standard extras are data CDs with Bartholomew's 1898 Royal Atlas of England and Wales, including some street maps and an index. You also get vouchers for further data sets from British Data Archive.

The Platinum extras include all the above plus a few more data CDs - nothing mainstream - that may or may not be relevant to your researches. There's also a more useful subscription to UK BMD and census online genealogy web search pages at www.TheGenealogist.co.uk. There are no extras for the Upgrade version.

RM4 has all the usual functions and facilities of mainstream family history (genealogy) software and a few more besides. Chief of these is probably the separate program RootsMagic To-Go, which installs a copy of the program and your data to a removable drive - CD or a USB memory stick - which will then run on any other computer. So you can take it to the library or to a family gathering.

Data entry of people and events is via an edit screen, where you can also add facts (occupations, residences, religion, etc.) with notes and information sources for each. Choose from 66 pre-entered facts and events or add your own. You can add a ‘proof' value to a fact or relationship to indicate how much it can be trusted. You can also share sources between people or events.

RootsMagic v4 will construct editable sentences from your fact fields for its reports. Sentences can be edited or replaced altogether. Text in notes can be formatted (bold, underlined, italic) and you can add photos on-screen and to some reports. There's built-in support for Quaker dates and increased flexibility for regular dates.

There are now five tabbed views - Pedigree, Family, Descendants, People (a list) and WebSearch - and you can choose which is to be the default on opening. RM4 will be able to handle the new LDS FamilySearch when it becomes generally available and there's already an edit screen for LDS ordinances. The new Sidebar can cycle through lists of family names, bookmarks, recently-viewed people, grouped people and an index.

You can refine place details with a field for the name of a church, cemetery, hospital or street address, which doesn't get in the way of searching in a gazetteer or geo-coding. The new Gazetteer shows matches for full or partial place names entered and the Mapping feature displays a map of places from Microsoft's Virtual Earth.

Reports can be printed, previewed or emailed. Print Preview or the Report Viewer shows you the finished document. You can assemble a ‘book' created from selected reports (including graphical pages) plus contents and name and place index pages, and place keepers for any already-printed pages.

There's a range of wall charts and paginated charts (to fit A4 paper), some with colour. RM4 can also generate six types of web pages to upload, with photos, notes, sources, index, surname list, and a GEDCOM file.

Verdict
RootsMagic v4 is bristling with new features, major and minor, matching or exceeding its mainstream competition. Its versatile reporting and publishing are better than many. RM4 runs under all current flavours of Windows, including the forthcoming Windows 7. RootsMagic To-Go is a milestone in portability (provided there's a computer where you're going).

Company: S&N Genealogy Supplies

Contact: 01722 716121

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