Thinking about my ancestors wasn't something I did much of when I was younger. My closest relatives all lived in the same city and I didn't really know most of my grandparents. My maternal grandmother, who I was close to, was very much in the present and preferred travelling to talking about the past.

Then I moved to London and started to miss my family a lot. Last year my brother came to visit and we discussed travelling to Wales to find my grandfathers birth place. The road trip never happened but I did discover a whole new branch of the family in Cambridgeshire. Finally it happened to me, the 'Where did I come from?' wonder.

So when the Family Tree Maker Deluxe Edition fell into our hands, I was very keen. Here was a way to track my family history without even having to pay for petrol, but does it actually work? I was sceptical at first; however the more time I spent on this program, the more impressed I was with how user friendly it is.

Inside the Family Tree Maker box is a CD and a Getting Started Guide. It's a very extensive user's guide, and once the program is installed there is a lot more support available. Not only do you have the booklet, you also have a 'help' option, online support, plus a tutorial available for every step. There is no excuse for not getting this program running correctly.

Of course I did everything backwards. I set up the program first, and then harangued my parents, grandmother and distant cousins for information, set up my family tree and only then did I consult the tutorials. That's when I realised that I'd spent several hours teaching myself something that I could have learned in 5 minutes.. At least now I can tell you that it's possible to run this program even with only the most rudimentary instructions.

The family tree program has 7 areas in which to hold your research.
Plan – for setting up tasks
People – to view all the individuals in your tree and their relationships
Places – to bring up maps associated with individuals
Media – for all your photos and documents
Source – to cite where all your photos and documents are from
Publish – for all your charts and reports
Web Search – for all the relevant search facilities

On top of that you can also have a family timeline, calculate relationships between individuals (i.e. Uncle, 2nd Great Grandfather, etc), find accurate place names and share your tree with other family members. Another advantage of the Family Tree Maker is that it comes with a 3 month free membership to ancestry.co.uk to help you with your research.

Building your family tree is never going to be an easy task. It takes time, research and lots of patience. I've already spent 2 weeks on mine already and it's still nowhere near completion, yet it's managed to hold my interest to date which is impressive as I have a very low boredom threshold. It's all the little things that have caught me.. Like now knowing where my grandparents got married, the names of their siblings and the fact that one of my ancestors met Gandhi in 1942 (I was very impressed).

Would I recommend the Family Tree Maker? Absolutely, it's now one of my favourite hobbies.

Available from Amazon and other online and high street software retailers.