Been thinking of trying to plot the family tree, but I'm not sure if any of the software is worth the money.  Anyone have any experience?

As I understand it, PAF from the Mormon church is the standard.

I bought a product years ago called "Family Tree".  I found it very difficult and would frequently get lost in the maze.

PAF is free. http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp?page=home/welcome/simplePAFRegistration.asp

I've been using Geni.com.  It's really intuitive, and free.  Also it's collaborative.  You send a link to your family members and they can add info and people.  You can add pictures and all kinds of stuff.  If you want to pay for something, you can order a printed tree with photos.

I picked up that for free tonight cool shit.  But I need something to research and pull records with.  Not sure what to use.  My family is almost entirely immigrant from 1850-1870's would like to see if I can pull ancestors from Europe.  Who knows maybe I'm a grandchild of royalty.

Gonna try this PAF thing waiting on the family to dig up birth dates and death dates now.  Let everyone know how it works out.  Thanks for the help.

My wife and I paid for ancestry.com It works well she has traced her family back to the 1300's, and I have got mine back to 1665, and the other part of mine back to 1530's

+1, we use it at the office for different kinds of domestic issues, litigations, etc.

familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

No need to register.  I've been able to trace my grandpa's side back to 1500's England.  It helps that one of my relatives on that side was one of the most famous Presidents of the U.S.     My mom's side also has a relative that was President of the US.  But I haven't been able to trace it as well.  I'm missing a couple steps to confirm it.  I know it's true, but can't prove it.  I can prove the other side.  The former President and I "share" a grandfather.

We use familysearch.org now.

Yup.  Familysearch IS PAF, at least that's the way I understand it.  The Mormon Church made it available to everyone for free.

ancestry.com & familysearch.org are repositories of genealogical data. They are not standalone genealogy software.

PAF, RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker and 100's of other programs are software that will sort your family information into recognizable chunks. You can import or download information from Ancestry or FamilySearch, but beware, just because it's linked, doesn't mean it's accurate.

Do your research. Document your sources. It's much easier to do today than it was 10,50,150 years ago, but mistakes (and lies) still happen.

GEDCOM, btw, is a format for universally exchanging genealogical data between programs. Makes it much simpler to "get a copy" of Uncle Fred's data, when he can burn a disk or flash drive. (Get copies of his sources, too. He's not going to be around forever!)

YMMV

I use Family Tree Maker 2009.  It's free if you use the pirate bay.