GarysTurn wrote:The biggest advantage to a desktop program that will interface with nFS will be the ability to download from nFS the information you do not have in you own files. But even then that information is available to you at any time online without the need for a desktop program. Desktop programs offer more functions than the online program provides but more functions are being added all the time so that will not be so important in the future.
Until Internet access is readily available at every conceiveable place you will do research, desktop programs will be very useful. It is very handy to have your genealogical data on a laptop while you are doing research, as you never know just what information you will come across and how it will connect to your existing data.
But I certainly agree with Gary's big point (if I understood him properly

) that we need to change our thinking and treat the common nFS data as our repository of information, rather than millions of isolated data sets on individuals' desktops.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.