A new genealogy program for handheld PocketPC computers has been released, and the program is available free of charge.
Pocket Ancestry is a program for Pocket PC that allows the user to view genealogy information from a GEDCOM format. Genealogical data can be displayed in various layouts: list of all the persons in data file; list of "patriarchs"; information about one person selected from the list; tree of all the ancestors or all the descendants of selected person; family of selected person; parents' family of selected person. The user has the possibility to tune some aspects of program behavior.
I used Pocket Ancestry for a bit on my iPAQ handheld. It worked okay, but I must say that it is a bit simplistic. It is strictly a file viewer; you use it to look at data in a GEDCOM file that was created on your desktop computer. The program's interface is a bit stark. It does display the data and can be used to carry your genealogy database with you; however, I found its search and display capabilities to be quite limited when compared to a couple of commercial genealogy programs for the same handhelds.
Pocket Ancestry's support web page is also rather "bare bones" and does not give much information. It contains a short README file, written by someone who apparently does not speak English as his native tongue. There is no user's manual. In short, this looks more like a program that is in beta test than one that is ready for release.
While Pocket Ancestry's price tag of zero is attractive, I must say that it doesn't measure up to the other PocketPC programs that I have used.
If you would like to see what you can obtain in a free genealogy file viewer for handheld PocketPC computers, you can find Pocket Ancestry at http://www.geocities.com/alexaleks3
I would strongly suggest that you also evaluate the Pocket Genealogist at http://www.northernhillssoftware.com. It has many more features and better-looking screen displays, in my opinion. It sells for $20 (Basic version) or $35 (Advanced version).
Another good genealogy program for handheld computers is My Roots at http://www.tapperware.com/MyRoots. It is available in two different versions: one for PocketPC handhelds and another for Palm computers. It sells for $24.95.
