A Computer for Genealogy

L. David Roper (roperld@vt.edu)
www.roperld.com
March 2000

The specifications for a computer to do genealogy rapidly change as the available hardware and the power and complexity of the relevant software change. In this tutorial document I consider only computers running Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000. Macintosh users will need to look elsewhere for hardware and software specifics; perhaps the book Genealogy on Macintosh or a list of genealogy utilities for the Mac will help. (However, the Internet resources given here can be equally well used on the Macintosh.)

If you already have a computer running Windows 98, it can be used to make doing genealogy easier and faster. If it is running Windows 95 and is powerful enough, upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition. I recommend a minimum 133 MHz processor, a minimum of 64 Mbytes memory and a minimum of 1 Gbytes free space on the hard disk for doing genealogy. Such a computer will be satisfactory for a few years. (If your computer has only 32 Mbytes memory, it is probably easy to take it to 64 Mbytes by adding one or more memory boards. Also, an extra hard drive is usually easy to add, and they are not expensive. Learn about the different formats for hard disks.) To find out what your computer's specifications are:

Right-click on My Computer; click on Properties and record what is there. Then click on Device Manager and then click on the + boxes to see and record the various devices in your computer.
Click on Start->Accessories->System Tools->System Information and record what is there.
Open My Computer and then right-click on each drive to find out details about it.

New Computer Specifications

If you are going to buy a new computer for the long term, I make the following recommendations for what to buy. (I will try to keep my recommendations up to date every few months. Here are my March 2000 recommendations for someone buying a new computer.):

Processor (CPU): Intel Pentium 500 MHz (or equivalent) minimum (Maximum available now is 1 GHz.)
Memory: 128 Mbytes minimum (The more you have the more programs you can run simultaneously.)
Disk size: 16 Gbytes minimum (SCSI or IDE) or two 10-Gbytes drives (Disk storage is very inexpensive now.)
133 MHz or faster PCI data bus.
AGP-2 graphics bus and board to drive your monitor.
CD-ROM drive: 32x minimum (SCSI or IDE ATAPI) (or 8x DVD if you want to watch DVD CD-ROM movies on your machine)
Ports: 1 parallel printer port, 2 com serial ports, 2 USB ports (standard these days) (An infrared port would be nice; most laptop computers have it.)
Iomega ZIP drive: 100 Mbytes minimum (250 Mbytes is available) (internal IDE ATAPI or external USB)
Printer: I use HP LaserJet and DeskJet printers, the former is faster but the latter can print in color. There are many other excellent printers.
Operating system: Windows 98 Second Edition (Win98SE) or Windows 2000 Professional (Win2k). (Win2k is much more stable than Win98SE, but costs more. In my opinion it is well worth the extra cost. If you have more than one hard-drive partition you can dual boot Win98SE and Win2k. Win2k can run on a machine with dual processors.) Run Start-(Windows Update) regularly to keep your copy of Windows up to date. Set up Windows so that you are notified when updates to the operating system are available.

Of course, you will need a monitor, the larger the better. I use a 21" monitor, which allows several programs to be viewed simultaneously. If you can afford it, you may want to consider a flat-panel monitor.

A portable computer is handy for carrying into libraries for recording genealogy data. One can buy portable computers that are as powerful as desktop machines, but they cost more.

Universal Serial Bus Ports

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a faster (up to 12 Mbps) and easier way (plug in while computer is running) to connect a large number (up to 127) of external devices to your computer than by using com serial ports or parallel printer ports. New computers have two USB ports to which you can attach four-port or seven-port hubs (and then more hubs to the two hubs if needed; this is called "daisy chaining") to get up to 127 USB ports. (An old Pentium computer, with a PCI internal data bus with an empty PCI slot, that does not have USB can be upgraded by installing a board. It must be running the latest version of Windows 95, but better to upgrade to Win98 first, or any version of Windows 98.) If you have USB on your computer, be sure that all future external devices that you buy (e.g., printers, scanners, modems, digital cameras, etc.) have USB-connection capability.

A new, even faster, type of port is becoming available; the FireWire port, which can transmit data up to 400 Mbps. This port is especially useful for video transfer. The FireWire bus may be used for faster hard-drive access in the future. Macintosh computers and several notebook Windows computers have a FireWire port. One can buy boards to add FireWire to a Windows 98/2000 computer.

Zip Drive

Genealogy files can get very large. E.g., I have a file that is 170 Mbytes and is growing every day. Therefore, it will not fit on a 100-Mbytes ZIP disk, but would fit on a 250-Mbytes ZIP disk. However, one can use WinZip to reduce it down to 16 Mbytes, which allows one to put several such files on a 100-Mbytes ZIP disk. Therefore, if you are going to send your large genealogy files through the U.S. mail, you need a ZIP drive. They are also useful for backup.

Do not confuse the Zip drive with the Zip/WinZip program. The former is a high-capacity removable drive and the latter is a program to compress files. The program allows more data to be stored on a Zip or any drive.

Buying a Computer

I have had excellent experiences buying several computers from Dell.com, although there are many places to buy excellent computers. Dell computers are top quality and their service is superior.

If you want to read more about buying a computer, see Buyers' Guides.

If you are tempted to get one of the "free computers" that are widely advertised, you might want to read:

If you already have a computer and want to upgrade from Windows 95/98 to Windows 2000 Professional, you must buy the Windows-2000 Professional version for new machines or any other version of Windows, not the upgrade version specifically for Windows NT which is less expensive. A good place to buy on-line Windows 2000 for your current machine is Accessmicron.com. If you are connected with a college or university, you can get it at lower cost through your institution.

Computer Management Software

Some useful computer management software packages are:

RegClean: If you are having regular system crashes in Windows 95/8, run this Microsoft program to clean up the registry.
Norton SystemWorks 2000: An integrated suite of Norton Utilities for detecting, repairing, and preventing hardware and software problems; Norton AntiVirus; Norton CleanSweep to remove safely and completely unneeded programs and files; Norton CrashGuard to protect your work against system crashes and screen freezes; access to Norton Web Services to keep your system and applications up to date with the most current software patches, virus definitions, and hardware drivers. (I recommend that you not install CrashGuard, as I find it annoying, and that you not have any of the programs put in your startup folder during setup.) The WinDoctor part of Norton Utililies should be run regularly to clean up your system. The SpeedDisk part of Norton Utilities should be run regularly to rearrange your hard disks. The LiveUpdate feature should be run regularly to keep your Norton SystemWorks programs and virus definitions up to date. Norton Web Services will help you update your other software and hardware drivers.
EzDesk: This wonderful little program enables Windows to remember where desktop icons have been placed for each screen resolution. It is shareware, which means you can try it out and then, if you decide you want to keep it, pay only $15. Download from EzDesk or order from Melissa Nguyen, E-mail: nguyen@compuserve.com, EzWare Technology
8-A Village Loop, Suite #160, Pomona, CA 91766, U.S.A.
WinZip: This program can reduce a text or graphics file to a much smaller size; often a 90% reduction for genealogy files. This capability is essential for sending large files over the Internet and very useful for backing up files.
Print Screen: Allows printing or saving to a graphics file any window or the entire computer screen.
There are several useful software tools in the Windows-98 Resource Kit on the Windows-98 CD-ROM. One that I especially like is ClipTray which acts as an advanced clipboard that keeps your content safe between Windows sessions. You can name, edit, organize, delete, and paste ClipTray items at any time and keep your favorite odds and ends close at hand. You may want to use some of other twenty-six tools.
You might want to look at Windows 98 Annoyances.

Some Useful External Devices

Of course, one needs a device for connecting the computer to the Internet. The usual device is a modem to connect through a telephone line at speeds up to 56 kps. You can get an internal modem when you buy a computer; I prefer an external one, mainly to isolate any telephone-line lightning glitches from the machine. I use an special ISDN line at speeds up to 128 kps, but it is considerably more expensive than an ordinary telephone line. Other options are becoming available:

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL): It is being offered for locations within 18,000 feet of the Blacksburg VA telephone office downtown at speeds up to 384 kps and at a cost about half the ISDN cost. DSL users high frequencies on an ordinary telephone line without affecting its use with a telephone. Unfortunately for me, I am just beyond the pale.
Cable Modem: Cable TV companies (Adelphia in Blacksburg VA) are beginning to make the TV cable available for Internet connections. If you are the only user on the cable you can get up to 500 kps incoming and either the same outgoing or up to 56 kps outgoing at a cheaper rate. However, if many computers are on your TV cable your speeds will be reduced, because you are sharing one cable with all the users.
An exciting new way to access the Internet is through wireless connections mediated by satellites. A few locations now have this capability with speeds up to 1.5 Mbps.

One new device that I find very helpful for genealogy is the Hewlett-Packard CapShare hand-held portable scanner. With it you can copy up to fifty pages of books and documents without finding and paying a copy machine in a library, and then later easily transfer the images to a computer through a serial or infrared port (no USB-port capability yet). The lowest price I have found for it is at Beyond.com.

Of course, a flat-bed scanner is very helpful for putting original documents and pictures in your computer; it should have the capability to connect to your computer through USB (see above) and have an optical-character-recognition (OCR) software package with it. A good OCR is OmniPage Pro.

Networking Your Home Computers

If you have more than one computer, say a desktop and a laptop or more, you may want to install a peer-to-peer Local Area Network (LAN) in your home. 3Com makes an excellent OfficeConnect 56K LAN Modem, which allows one to connect four computers to the LAN such they all use the same modem and telephone line, share files, CD-ROM drives, ZIP drives, printers. (You can buy it from Beyond.com.) Put an Ethernet NIC (Network Interface Card) in each machine (if one is not already there; some motherboards have Ethernet already built in) and connect the computers and a telephone line to the LAN modem and you are in business; Windows takes care of installing the needed software. (My daughter recently installed one painlessly, she said.) Setting Up a Windows 98 Home Network is a useful small book.

Genealogy Software

I use the following genealogy software for the purposes indicated:

Storing and manipulating data: Personal Ancestral File version 3.01M [DOS version] and version 4.0.4 [Windows version, which is free]. I use 4.0.4 most of the time, but for some purposes I prefer version 3.01M [DOS, but runable in Windows]. Both PAF3 and PAF4 use the same data files. I have created a comparison of PAF3 and PAF4. (PAF is also available for the Macintosh.) I have tried several other Windows genealogy programs, but none have allowed me to enter, edit and compare data as quickly as I can with PAF. Most genealogy packages have the capability to include pictures for individuals and families.
Creating gedcom files: I use PAF version 4.0.4, which produces smaller files than version 3.01M.
Creating descendants'-list files: I prefer the program Descend; however, the version for PAF3/4 data files still has bugs. I prefer it because it allows one to include full dates and places, notes and parents of spouses; and it creates a compact names index. So, I generally use PAF3; it gives birth and death dates but no places or notes, but does allow creation of a text file. PAF4 gives birth, marriage and death dates and birth and death places, but it currently has no option for creating a text file; I create a PDF file with it. Recently I have started using Brother's Keeper, which gives full dates and places and it creates an RTF file, which can be indexed.
Creating surnames lists: In the past I have used GEDtoTT, which creates a text file of surnames from a gedcom file. I have recently started using Brother's Keeper; you can download it for a free trial. It lists the number of females and males for each surname.
Creating locations lists: The Brother's Keeper genealogy program has this option; you can download it for a free trial.
Creating other types of reports: The two versions of PAF have differences in the reports that are possible to generate. The add-on program PAF Companion allows more report options for both PAF versions.

Links to many genealogy software packages can be found at Genealogy Software Springboard.

If you are particularly interested in the computing aspects of genealogy, you might want to subscribe to the Genealogical Computing quarterly journal.

Other software that I have found useful for genealogy are:

PAF Pal is an add-on to PAF4 or a stand-alone program for PAF3 that allows global changes of names, dates and places and reports global statistics and number of descendants for an individual for a PAF family file. (World Family Tree does the unfortunate thing of putting the word Private in the date fields on its CD-ROMs for those who may still be alive; it can involve much work to get rid of that unneeded word. PAF Pal can get rid of it easily for PAF files.) It can be purchased from Pal Software, 1065 West 10210 South, South Jordan, UT 84095; E-mail: StevenCannon@Bigfoot.com Telephone: 801-254-0160
City/County Finder: This DOS program finds the location of any stored city/town/community (populated place), county, or geographic location in the United States. It can also search for all cities in a given county, all counties in a given state, and do a proximity search listing all other cities within 2-99 miles of a designated city or set of coordinates. Searches can be based on complete names, "sounds like" names, or partial names. I use it regularly.
Adobe Acrobat Reader: This free program allows you to read PDF files, which are common on the Internet. Some genealogy data on the Internet are in PDF files. If you want to put your genealogy documents and data on 650-Mbytes CD-RW or CD-R disks (see below), you may want to buy Adobe Acrobat; then you can do more things with your documents when putting them on CD-RW or CD-R disks as PDF files.

Data on CD-ROMS

There are many CD-ROMs that one can buy with genealogy data on them. Some of them are:

Family Tree Maker's World Family Tree CD-ROMs, which contain thousands of family trees. You can download a free CD viewer. You can find out what volumes a particular person is in, purchase the right to download a volume, or purchase the CDs.
North America Vital Records Index CD-ROMs from LDS FamilySearch.
British Vital Records Index CD-ROMs from FamilySearch.
British 1851 census CD-ROMs from FamilySearch.
British 1881 census CD-ROMs from FamilySearch.
Many other genealogy data CD-ROMs are available from FamilySearch.
Digital Microfilms of U.S. census data can be purchased from Heritage Quest.
Search on AltaVista for "genealogy CD-ROM".

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