David Abernathy said: "Stick with FTM. All of the others do also have major issues but are just a different set or worms."

As much as I "hate" to agree with this statement, I do, but with some reservation.

David also said:"You are going to lose to much data by going to another program, because the conversions are based on the GEDCOM standards, which we all know are far from being perfect."

I agree with this statement as well, putting the fault NOT on the GEDCOM standard, but the programs that do not use it correctly. I think this is what David is saying. Know that while some basic data will transfer, some of the information you set up in FTM (work arounds for one) will not transfer and may cause the receiving program to "loose its mind."

This for me was very true when I evaluated FTM the first time. It uses custom tags to support biological/adoption relationship rather than ones from the GEDCOM standard. It also uses different tags than other programs to indicate types of household relationships, alternate names, occupational "work places", sourcing, notes, the list goes on.