I’ve been a RootsMagic user since RM3. I think, Heritage Family Tree was my first genealogy program and 1 maybe 2 others preceeded or followed HFT. Once HFT started having support problems I saw a brochure for RootsMagic at the Haynes Prez Library. I liked the features the brochure hi-lighted and the price was very reasonable and so a week or two later my history with RM started.
I’ve spent the past two weeks going thru the RM8 webinars w both RM7 and RM8 programs running. Went full-on, full-time with RM8 this week. RM8 is different but I like it. And as Bruce stated, RM had to change and change significantly to keep up w today’s technology.
Let Bruce and the team know that I appreciate all the effort and work they do for today’s genealogist.
Hello. Glad you like RM8. I find it unusable, because I have many notes for my ancestors and although I asked long ago, the slowness issue has still not been fixed. If I want to add a word or two to my mother’s notes, I have to wait 8 to 10 seconds before what I type appears. So, I am sticking with RM7, and will be shopping for a different genealogy program in the future. Bill
Slow typing may reflect some issue on your software. If on windows perhaps an anti malware program or just general startup clutter. RM8 on mac is a heavy cpu user and if your computer is clogged up that could be the cause.
Failing resolution consider FTM 2019 as a replacement. It has a similar person edit screen and ancestry hints/synch feature. It is my main program but RM8 is much better at web searching and should continue to improve over time.
Like fastrock, I’ve used RM since version 2 and have often recommended it to others. And as a software developer I have much empathy for the difficulties reported by the development team in implementing RM8. But, RM8 is not ready for prime time. I’ve used RM8 for several months and the only new feature I initially struggled with is the Citation Name and that’s due to the way RM8 converted my RM7 citations. But there have been frustrations.
Last evening, I installed the latest update and RM8 would not shutdown. I had to use Task Manager to close the program.
Since RM6 I’ve hoped that a major effort would be put in improving the generation of fact sentences and expanding the Help content. Many terms used in the Help are still not defined or poorly defined. Examples are few and far between. Reports are very important to me and the RM8 reports are a step backwards from RM7. Also, printing a report should not crash the program. When I discovered that one cannot create a new RM8 database file containing a part of an existing file, a useful feature in RM7, I decided to abandon RM8 and use RM7 for the foreseeable future.
I want to echo @fastrock and others, and make public that I can’t see a benefit in complaining about software behavior on these forums. Doing so, is not constructive. I wish persons in this cohort would find a friend to commiserate with offline. Appreciate the fact that Bruce, Renee, Mike and others are working their tails off to implement a product that meets their quality standards, and yours.
My sage advice; be patient, and if you spot a bug, report it to RM staff directly instead of making you observation known through an online forum. By doing the latter, you come across to me as someone desperate for psychological gain by seeking internet strangers to commiserate with. Perhaps not considered by the poster, the resulting circle jerk is no more effective in resolving the software issue, than privately emailing RM staff to report a bug, then waiting patiently.
What the circle jerks do, is dampen company’s reputation unnecessarily, which I think is rude and inappropriate for a company working very hard to offer a versatile product at a price point under $50.
I can think of one good benefit. In a larger than expected number of instances, it turns out that the software wasn’t misbehaving and someone is able to learn that there is a different way that they need to go to accomplish what they want.
On the other side of the coin, the same thing can be said about all of the little apologists out there that need others to agree that certain software is the next best thing since sliced bread, when it is actually burnt toast.
…and yes, I am a very long time user AND a recovering software developer.