I have a subscription to ancestry.com and genealogy.com. I have found
they compliment each other well.  Genealogy.com has a census index for
most years.  This is my one luxury. I am a record junkie and if a book
prints it, I want it. It is cheaper this way.  Much cheaper.

I have had problems in the past with the printing of images from
ancestry, so I know how frustrating it is.  I had to do some tweaking,
but I upgraded my browser (Netscape).  I also went to
        http://www.lizardtech.com

and upgraded patches to the MrSid viewer.  Lizard Tech has a good
website with support for it's products.  I also downloaded updated
drivers for my printer.

Until then, any printout I did was worthless. Now they are excellent.
They are copies of the microfilm images and very readable.  Some you may
have to decide to print landscape and then make sure you check 'fit to
page'.  Now I have the option of printing the entire image or the the
'selected portion'.

MrSid also has a  free stand-alone viewer available for a free
download.  I have found that to be very, very valuable.  (Saving a
census image as a .jpg file or .bmp file wasn't working).  It allows the
same manipulation of the image as if you were online.  I haven't tried
it yet, but it also allows the image to be converted to a .tiff image
(which would make it easy to lighten the image if needed).

Just my experience FWIW. It took me a long time to get to this point,
with alot of swearing and hair pulling. I am in no way connected to
either of those companies (except as a paying customer).  The patches,
upgrades, stand-alone viewer from Lizard Tech are free.  I have not
found it necessary to buy any of Lizard Tech's Products--what they offer
free does the job great.

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