My daughter and I (who live 200 miles apart) have been using GR for a couple of months now, on the same non-fee-paying account, and find it an excellent way to keep each other up-to-date with the tree (easier than emailing gedcoms every day!). So we're using the GR tree as our primary repository of information - though I take care to download the gedcom file every time it's updated, just in case we get bumped off the site as has happened to some others. The several contacts we've had from others have been a bonus: we've managed to transfer a couple of these into direct email exchanges off-site, to join exchanges already generated through rootschat and rootsweb: we now have two separate areas of the family each with 3 or 4 distantly related people copied into the discussions.
In summary we have found GR quite useful mainly for managing our tree. It has generated contacts - and there are two or three GR members whose trees overlap ours in critical areas. Tempted to pay up - though since making much more progress through rootschat and rootsweb, it's still not our first priority ! At £9.50 it's nearly three times the price of a will that I downloaded last week from the National Archive which gave me invaluable primary information as well as an insight into the family history. Sure, without paying we can't initiate a conversation - but once we've been contacted by a member we can reply without any problems. Just have to avoid using the @ symbol or '.com' etc when supplying email addresses!
- Steve
