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The current products from GHCS are designed to support the use of a PalmOS™ handheld — a PDA or smartphone — for doing genealogical research in conjunction with a PC-based genealogy application. What all of these products basically do is to allow you to take the data from the genealogy program on your PC and display it quickly and conveniently on your handheld device.
This can be very convenient when doing research away from home, when even a notebook PC would be difficult to use. It is always nice to be able to carry your genealogy with you right in your pocket, and to be able to take it out and refer to it wherever you happen to be. Our customers have used our GedStar products in research libraries, at the office, while walking through cemeteries, and of course at family gatherings. With the new photo support in GedStar Pro, you can even have a "photo album" to go along with the rest of your family history.
All of our products support the import of data from a GEDCOM file, making them compatible with all known PC genealogy programs. In addition, some products are able to import data directly from the files that go along with specific genealogy programs; this allows them to import more information and makes the conversion process easier.
Read the descriptions that follow and visit the product detail pages and the product comparison page to decide which product is best for you. All are available for download as a fully-functional free trial that you can use for a limited time period.
GedStar Pro
GedStar Pro is our premier product offering, and is the one that is recommended for most situations. In addition to GEDCOM support, it is capable of importing directly from The Master Genealogist and from Legacy Family Tree. With the addition of the PAF/FTM Add-On module, it can also import directly from Family Tree Maker and Personal Ancestral File. This product fully supports all of the latest handhelds and smartphones, and will continue to be enhanced and updated in the future.
GedStar Basic
GedStar Basic was our first product offering, released in 1999. At the time, PDAs were strictly monochrome devices and had very small memory sizes by today's standards. GedStar was therefore designed to minimize memory usage and to have a very simple user interface. It imports data from GEDCOM files only, and supports only a small subset of the defined GEDCOM events. This product is recommended mainly for users who own older-model handhelds that cannot be used with GedStar Pro. This product will remain available and will continue to be supported, but will not receive any future updates.
GedStar-Plus
GedStar-Plus is an enhancement of the basic GedStar product that can directly import data from Legacy Family Tree and from The Master Genealogist. However, its range of supported events is the same as for GedStar Basic. This product is only recommended for owners of older handhelds, and will not receive any future updates.
Other Handheld Platforms
If you have a device that GedStar products will not run on, the chances are that it uses a different operating system. For example, devices made by Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and Dell use variations of the PocketPC operating system. Check our Other Platforms page for a suggested solution.
