Hi all

I only have the odd hour to spare nowadays, as renovating a property, so I'd like to know which would be the best UK newspapers website is the best for

1) access speed ...my devices tend to be older Win 7, Tab A tablet,forget the old phone lol etc and don't want to pay a sub'n and find you have to have the latest device OPs for it to not freeze constantly. I use all my devices at varying times.BUT have bought myself a Win 11 used laptop now just getting to termswith it lol, but tablet still in use more often.

2) low OCR errors (bad scans) but I'm suspecting they all use the samee scans on licence

Some time ago I found from one of these site's searches, teasing quotes from the top 2 sentences of personal ads, but were so badly read from OCR machines, I could only just make out the promise(from dates, places, odd words) that they could be my gt gt grandfather's ads.

Are they all much the same really. Price of subscription not a material issue, would be looking for a yezrly sub'n so Icould dip in and out when time permitted.Im not a skinflint, just a purist techie who squeezes the pips out of technologie to save landfill, and bec:grimacing: ause I hate the moneymaking schemes of Microsoft.

I use FMP and find it’s not too bad. If you’re using your tablet you need iOS version 17 or higher. If you want to check out first if that site works OK with your device, the British Library collection is free to view. You don’t need an account to see those newspapers, although the Sheffield ones only cover 1760-1793. It would give you an idea though if the site is workable for you before you part with any money. Go to newspapers, then in the filters just select access type, and then free to view.

Heths

Hi there,

Thanks Heather for that. I think I guessed about the limited Sheffield archive of the Library free to view, or some other free period of access of another site, and outside my search range for my Gt Gt Grandfather, (around 1800 to 1903), because of some research I did ages ago, and downloaded some newspaper pages from Lincolnshire. Though my old laptop freezes now when I try to open the files. Hence the purchase of my newer Win 11 laptop, I'll migrate them onto there to open them fingers crossed they are compatible. Those downloads must have been free and from those sources because I've never had a newspaper sub'n before.

My tablet is not suitable therefore for use for this, but I'm hoping to migrate all my vast family history onto the newer laptop, as my old on is really struggling to cope now.

Do you know if an older version of Legacy, the one time very popular family history program, on which I had/have many records and reports that ran on Win XP, would run on Win 11?

Not really familiar with my Win 11 yet. Still trying to customise the user interface to be more familiar and logical for me to use at speed, as I do Win 7 laptop. I don't know what the technicians were on when they left the design and interface of XP or Win 7 behind. They were certainly not having family historians in mind when they redesigned everything.

Morning Ann,

I have Legacy & Windows 11 and have not problems.

Elaine.

Hi

I might have a go at installing my Legacy Program on my new used Win 11 laptop then...if only it had a Disk drive!!!

I'll have to look at downloading it using a product key that came with the original version on disk when XP was the norm. Hoping the original version (which is vast enough and does all the reports I could ever want and creates CDs too) works with Win 11, or do you think they will actually download a version compatible with Win 11...it would make sense.

Or do you think my Legacy version will be prohibited so I have to buy an actual Win 11 version, which I will not do, I'd just continue to use the original on an old laptop.

I've just looked into improving my Annual Ancestry Membership to include Newspapers access, but in order to do that the AI robot enquiries 'person' tells me I must get All Areas Access costing more than double my premium annual rate £119.99 for UK and Irish records access. They want £298 annually !

I have done all my international research years ago, only need UK and Irish records continuously now, with access to UK Newspapers only. I'm beginning to think my original question is the best way to go... pay separately for access to UK Newspapers subscription, if I could find out which is the best one to subscribe to.