Thanks for your thoughts everyone and the websites too!
For those of you who use Family Tree Maker and subscribe to Ancestry.com, is there a reason not to just use the tree available on the website? Why did you purchase the program too? And if you upload your tree to ancestry.com must you then subscribe for the rest of your life to have access to it? I have looked at several sites and they all seem to want you to just start using it, whereas I would like to understand how it actually works first in order to decide which one to use.