using Family Tree Maker in virtual PC for Mac

[rusty]

I would like to buy an iMac G5 to replace my troublesome Windows XP Pro
with SP2 computer. However, I use Family Tree Maker on a regular basis,
and it does much more than Reunion for Mac. So I'll need to use Virtual
PC if I buy a Mac. I've learned that it is necessary to have 1GB of
memory in the Mac in order to have virtual PC operate at a decent
speed. Anybody out there have experience using FTM in virtual PC? In
particular, is it aggravatingly slow, acceptable, or not much different
from Windows? Any other problems with FTM in virtual PC?

[Charlie]

On 18 Dec 2004 15:23:07 -0800, "rusty" <[email protected]> wrote:

I would like to buy an iMac G5 to replace my troublesome Windows XP Pro
with SP2 computer. However, I use Family Tree Maker on a regular basis,
and it does much more than Reunion for Mac. So I'll need to use Virtual
PC if I buy a Mac. I've learned that it is necessary to have 1GB of
memory in the Mac in order to have virtual PC operate at a decent
speed. Anybody out there have experience using FTM in virtual PC? In
particular, is it aggravatingly slow, acceptable, or not much different
from Windows? Any other problems with FTM in virtual PC?

Just switch to Reunion. I think you'll find it's a much better program
than FTM.
Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

[Ron Parsons]

In article <[email protected]>,
"rusty" <[email protected]> wrote:

I would like to buy an iMac G5 to replace my troublesome Windows XP Pro
with SP2 computer. However, I use Family Tree Maker on a regular basis,
and it does much more than Reunion for Mac. So I'll need to use Virtual
PC if I buy a Mac. I've learned that it is necessary to have 1GB of
memory in the Mac in order to have virtual PC operate at a decent
speed. Anybody out there have experience using FTM in virtual PC? In
particular, is it aggravatingly slow, acceptable, or not much different
from Windows? Any other problems with FTM in virtual PC?

Your premise that FTM does much more than Reunion is questionable at
best.

Just what is it that you think Reunion is unable to do?

--
Ron Parsons

[Dave Hinz]

On 18 Dec 2004 15:23:07 -0800, rusty <[email protected]> wrote:

I would like to buy an iMac G5 to replace my troublesome Windows XP Pro
with SP2 computer. However, I use Family Tree Maker on a regular basis,
and it does much more than Reunion for Mac.

What fuctions aren't you seeing in Reunion?

So I'll need to use Virtual
PC if I buy a Mac. I've learned that it is necessary to have 1GB of
memory in the Mac in order to have virtual PC operate at a decent
speed. Anybody out there have experience using FTM in virtual PC? In
particular, is it aggravatingly slow, acceptable, or not much different
from Windows?

Well, yes, you need to give VPC plenty of RAM - it's running a full XP
install, after all, and a PC with 512MB isn't going to give you much
room to run anything with the footprint of XP these days.

Any other problems with FTM in virtual PC?

Probably work just fine, but what aren't you seeing in Reunion? There
are enough users here who may be able to help you with the transition.
For me, it was the app which finally convinced me to switch to Mac.

Dave Hinz

[rusty]

Charlie, Ron and Dave,

Thanks very much for your replies. I saw on the web that Reunion
received good reviews from users as well as the website and magazine
reviewers. That sounded good, but I contacted Reunion support to ask
specifically if their program would generate a family history book,
complete with a table of contents, chapters, placement of photos and
other graphics at any place within text pages, and an index. If so,
could it then export the book as a PDF file (which is the format
publishers prefer). Newer versions of Family Tree Maker will do all
those things. The reply from Reunion support was that the program
cannot generate a book, but that it does provide various formats of
family information that might be included in a book. So that's the
reason for my believing that FTM would be better than Reunion. If my
reply from Reunion was incorrect, and that the program can actually do
the above tricks, then please let me know about it. I obviously would
rather not have to use virtual PC.

I do understand why the memory must be increased to operate VPC at
reasonable speed, but would like to know if anyone has actually
experienced that speed is improved, particularly using FTM.

[Joe Makowiec]

On 19 Dec 2004 in soc.genealogy.computing, rusty wrote:

The reply from Reunion support was that the program
cannot generate a book, but that it does provide various formats of
family information that might be included in a book. So that's the
reason for my believing that FTM would be better than Reunion. If my
reply from Reunion was incorrect, and that the program can actually do
the above tricks, then please let me know about it. I obviously would
rather not have to use virtual PC.

Odds are that, no matter how good the output from the genealogy program,
you're probably going to want to do some tweaking anyway. So your best
bet is probably a program which outputs to word processor format. Tweak
in the WP, then output to pdf or hard copy.

--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe

[singhals]

rusty wrote:

Charlie, Ron and Dave,

Thanks very much for your replies. I saw on the web that Reunion
received good reviews from users as well as the website and magazine
reviewers. That sounded good, but I contacted Reunion support to ask
specifically if their program would generate a family history book,
complete with a table of contents, chapters, placement of photos and
other graphics at any place within text pages, and an index. If so,
could it then export the book as a PDF file (which is the format
publishers prefer). Newer versions of Family Tree Maker will do all
those things. The reply from Reunion support was that the program
cannot generate a book, but that it does provide various formats of
family information that might be included in a book. So that's the
reason for my believing that FTM would be better than Reunion. If my
reply from Reunion was incorrect, and that the program can actually do
the above tricks, then please let me know about it. I obviously would
rather not have to use virtual PC.

I don't believe ANY program can do all that satisfactorily. Not even
the add-ons/utilities designed to do so. If I could have found one, I
wouldn't have spent 3 calendar years, four mice, two computers and half
my sanity tweaking the output from the best of the ones I COULD find.

Cheryl

[Ron Parsons]

In article <[email protected]>,
"rusty" <[email protected]> wrote:

Charlie, Ron and Dave,

Thanks very much for your replies. I saw on the web that Reunion
received good reviews from users as well as the website and magazine
reviewers. That sounded good, but I contacted Reunion support to ask
specifically if their program would generate a family history book,
complete with a table of contents, chapters, placement of photos and
other graphics at any place within text pages, and an index. If so,
could it then export the book as a PDF file (which is the format
publishers prefer). Newer versions of Family Tree Maker will do all
those things. The reply from Reunion support was that the program
cannot generate a book, but that it does provide various formats of
family information that might be included in a book. So that's the
reason for my believing that FTM would be better than Reunion. If my
reply from Reunion was incorrect, and that the program can actually do
the above tricks, then please let me know about it. I obviously would
rather not have to use virtual PC.

I do understand why the memory must be increased to operate VPC at
reasonable speed, but would like to know if anyone has actually
experienced that speed is improved, particularly using FTM.

The Family History report does not do a table of contents, nor chapters,
but does all the others. Reunion can send any report to any word
processor you have where you might add and tweak and MacOS X can save
any document from any application as a PDF.

A test family history report on my data for 13 generations beginning in
1650 took about 2 seconds to generate 78 pages and have them appear on
screen.

--
Ron Parsons

[Dave Hinz]

On 19 Dec 2004 20:46:59 -0800, rusty <[email protected]> wrote:

If my
reply from Reunion was incorrect, and that the program can actually do
the above tricks, then please let me know about it. I obviously would
rather not have to use virtual PC.

Well, one thing to consider would be use Reunion for the information
entering and manipulation, and then only fire up VPC and FTM when you want
to run the book (basically a reporting option you like with that tool).
Nothing wrong with using one app to generate the database and another
different tool to report the way you want it. Something to consider,
anyway. I don't know how well FTM sticks to GEDCOM but obviously you'd
want to do a test run to make sure things aren't lost.

I do understand why the memory must be increased to operate VPC at
reasonable speed, but would like to know if anyone has actually
experienced that speed is improved, particularly using FTM.

Let us know when you find out, I don't think anyone here has stuck
with 'doze genealogy apps after making the switch. I stuck with PAF
and Legacy for a while, but once I learned Reunion I gave those up.
That having been said, if I needed to do a complex merge of gedcom
files, I'd probably fire up VPC and Legacy, and certain reports I like
PAF Companion for...

The good news is you have all the options in the world open to you.

Dave Hinz

[rusty]

Thanks to all of you who responded. I appreciate very much your
information and advice. From what some of you say, I think I was
unclear in describing my preferences. We may be talking about two
different things. You speak in terms of reports, and I believe that
Reunion may well be easier to use and create better reports than FTM.
Commonly a family report will be posted on a website, along with other
family items such as photos, copies of census reports, other supporting
evidence, etc. The collection will be referred to as a family book.
However, that is not the type of book to which I refer. I mean an
actual book, one that can be bound, held in your hands and read with
convenience, and duplicates of it can be provided to family members.
FTM can generate such a book, which they call a Family History Book.
Using FTM v.10, my wife created one in May, 2003, and she's working on
another now. FTM structures the book around a blank table of contents,
and provides the user with a menu of appropriate choices to create the
book, such as first page of a chapter, and "blank page." The user
decides what items go into each chapter. (Most of my wife's chapters
centered on a husband/wife pair and their family, and each chapter
included a lot of text in addition to family report, photos, and
support data.) Early on, the user inserts partially completed chapters,
and any other sections as well, into the TOC. FTM numbers the pages,
and later when additions and revisions are made to a chapter, the book
is repaginated. And an index is created. It was actually an easy
process to put the book together. A problem with FTM v.10 was that the
book itself could not be exported as a separate file which could be
taken to a publisher to print copies and bind them. (We had to make the
best quality print and then have it photocopied by the printing
company, who also bound the copies.) That problem has been overcome in
FTM v.2005, which exports the book as a PDF file.

So that's the reason we do not want to give up FTM. It does not perform
as well as Reunion in many aspects, but its option of creating an
actual book is the overriding factor for us.
I'm still looking for someone who has used FTM in Virtual PC.