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GenoPro version: 3.0.1.5
Last Login: Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Posts: 27,
Visits: 213
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This is probably not new to you, but what this link provides is just as hard to believe:
http://genealogy-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
Has Genopro always been overlooked by this "trustworthy" site?
We Genopro users know how Genopro evolved from an unpopular simple program to an unbeatable ease-of-use but powerful software.
Just sharing my thoughts here, but I believe Genopro should be in that list.
Edited: Tuesday, August 5, 2008 by
GenoProSupport
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FamilyTrees.GenoPro.com
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GenoPro version: 3.1.0.1
Last Login: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Posts: 4,886,
Visits: 22,803
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This list has barely changed since I was aware of it 4 years ago. The reviews at http://genealogy-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ are very light and shallow. I could do the same review comparing a Mercedez, a Toyota and a Lada and have the grid full of identical features (4 or 5 speed gearbox, reverse gear, spare tire, whipers, front lights). At the end, I would conclude the Lada has 90% of the features of the Mercedez, and therefore a Mercedez should be sold 10% higher than the Lada for the extra features. People buy expensive cars and willingly pay for those non-essential features (after all, a car is just a device for moving individuals from one place to another).
In genealogy, some features, although small, may change everything. For instance, there is a feature called "Pedigree View" in the review. Answering Yes/No to such a feature is superficial. Some pedigree views are better than others. Is the pedigree view includes additional spouses, half siblings, step siblings to describe a real life scenario? What about the zoom of the pedigree. No other software offers a zoom like GenoPro. GenoPro is not a database; it is a pedigree-drawing software. GenoPro compares more to Visio than to any of those genealogy applications. The user can also generate reports using the full VBScript and JavaScript as IIS (Microsoft Internet Information Server) does. The user has access to the full source code to customize the reports. No other genealogy application can come close to GenoPro's report generator. You should see what type of "reports" other genealogy applications are generating. It's a joke.
Another feature GenoPro has is Undo/Redo. Most of these genealogy software are databases. Once you insert a record, the data is written to the database and you cannot undo the change unless you delete the record, or manually re-type the previous data. I can walk to the list of features in the review and point what's missing with each. For instance, the "Multiple Language" feature does not mention the word Unicode. If Unicode is not mentioned, it is not there. Supporting Unicode does require work. I spent 6 months working solely on Unicode to support the 1.2 million characters defined in the Unicode standard. There is a lot of reading involved to understand and support Unicode. GenoPro 1.x was in the same situation, yet capable to build trees in non-Latin languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean. The problem with GenoPro 1.x was when sorting non-Latin names, or mixing several languages together on the same tree. With the support of Unicode in GenoPro 2007, all those problems have been resolved. I can tell you, any software not supporting Unicode is doomed. Supporting Unicode is not an easy upgrade, and the transition from non-Unicode to Unicode creates havoc to documents. Converting a document to Unicode using the wrong alphabet does result in complete garbage, which is enough to scare any competitor to consider supporting Unicode. When importing a genealogy tree from version 1.x to version 2007, GenoPro uses a special algorithm to "guess" which alphabet was used to create the original document. If that algorithm fails, then the user can explicitly pick the alphabet from a list.Not long time ago, the website was giving a very positive review to Cumberland Family Tree with multi-lingual support. I remember investigating the multi-lingual feature of CF, to discover it was only Latin-based, meaning no support for other alphabets. Now, if you visit the website, www.cf-software.com, you will notice the content is no longer Latin. Since Cumberland Family Tree is no longer there, and there must be 10 software titles in the list to match the domain name TopTenReview.com, the newcomer is Famtree. GenoPro has more visitors each day than what www.famtreesoftware.com has each month. Regularly, we have more daily traffic than the annual traffic of www.famtreesoftware.com.
It appears the genealogy titles in this review are competing among each other for having the most features by neglecting quality. If you win a rat race, you are still a rat. I have received thousand of suggestions from customers to improve GenoPro, and GenoPro 2007 is the end result. I have several customers who built large genealogy trees using GenoPro. By large, I mean a tree containing ten of thousands of individuals with thousand of pictures. GenoPro is about quality. Time will tell which strategy will win. I have chosen quality. Let people decide for themselves what is best suited for them. As for the advertising, now it is a bit more agressive. On my first visit to http://genealogy-software-review.toptenreviews.com/, I got the following: 
I clicked on Cancel, and got re-directed to the following: 
Obviously the advertiser has no respect for my wish not having my computer scanned. I was forced to download this program to "clean my computer". There was no way to get rid of this dialog; if I clicked on OK, the page initiated a download, and when I cancelled the download, I got the same screenshot. I managed to kill the browser. That type of "anti virus" program is likely to be a virus. I personally feel the quality of the review is comparable to the quality of the advertising on the website - the type of advertising one gets visiting Warez and Porn sites.
Edited: Saturday, August 23, 2008 by
GenoProSupport
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