Once you get into doing envelopes, writing a footnoted research paper, or composing a book with a table of contents and an index, WordPad becomes insufficient. Then you'll need word-processing software with more features. With any luck, something like Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect came pre-installed on your computer, but if not, you can purchase such packages at any office supply store.

When I first began researching my own family back in the early 1990s, I encountered someone who was using a word-processing program to keep track of her genealogical research. Despite her assurances that word-processing software met all of her needs, I have always wondered if eventually she realized that word-processing software was not designed to help her meet her genealogical goals, and so switched to genealogy-database software.

On the other hand, the world of genealogy software in 1992 was quite different from what it is today. The world of 1992 was dominated by freeware and shareware, although there were a few relatively expensive commercial programs. It was difficult to find genealogy software in computer software stores, and the Web was not yet a vehicle for online purchasing. But that was then. What choices are we faced with today?

Freeware (software that can be obtained at no cost) and shareware (software that can be tried at no cost, but which one is expected to pay for later) are still very much with us. Commercial genealogy software is now widely available in nearly any place that sells software, and demonstration versions can even be downloaded from the Web. As you might expect, the cost for commercial software varies, although the prices for the basic packages (not the versions that have a lot of extra CD-ROM products) seem to fall between $20 and $60.

When I first got into genealogy, I could not know if it was something I was going to stick with. As I looked at my high-priced home exercise equipment gathering dust, the thought of spending a lot of money for genealogy software that I might stop using the next week or the next month was a very unattractive choice for me. As a result, price was an important consideration for my first purchase. If you are new to genealogy, this may be an important consideration for you as well.

Shareware and demo versions of commercial software would seem to provide you with free software for a time period in which you could decide whether or not you're going to continue with your research. Yet, you may not be able to spend enough time with shareware or commercial demo versions to help you make the purchase decision. Is freeware an option for your first genealogy software package?

Unfortunately, nearly all freeware (and shareware, for that matter) is produced by individuals who tomorrow may no longer be interested or willing to support their products. The most notable exception is Personal Ancestral File 4.0.4 (PAF), produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the LDS church) and distributed via their Web site at www.familysearch.org. To find it there, select "Order Family History Resources" and then "Software Downloads--Free." Yes, Virginia, a free, full-featured genealogy database program supported by a large organization does exist.

Should you later find that PAF lacks a feature required by one of your genealogical goals, you have not lost all of the time and energy you spent in entering your data. The LDS's own GEDCOM file format permits you to export your data from your PAF database and then import it into whatever commercial software program you decide to purchase.

According to the cliché, "You get what you pay for." In the world of genealogy software, sometimes you even get what you didn't pay for!

Drew Smith is an instructor with the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He is also a regular contributor to the quarterly journal Genealogical Computing, where he writes the "Genealogy Cybrarian" column (formerly known as "Infobahn"). He can be reached at drewsmith@aol.com.