Quote Originally Posted by Red Redwine View Post
It sounds like you have quite a bit of knowledge on this subject. Are you aware of a good basic explanation on the web of the different tests available and what they provide in the way of results? I'm just beginning to get into genealogy and recently gifted my Mom the AncestryDNA test. She's been doing it for quite a while, but this is our first foray into the DNA testing.
Here is a good source of information: http://isogg.org/wiki/Wiki_Welcome_Page

The test you gave your Mother is an autosomal DNA test: http://isogg.org/wiki/Portal:Autosomal_DNA

It tests portions of all chromosomes, compares them with other people in that database, and matches you to people with identical little snippets of chromosomes. Autosomal tests are good for people who are interested in more than just their surname line (male Y-DNA) and particularly women because they don't have Y-DNA. One advantage of using Ancestry.com is most people in the database should have a good understanding of their family tree. It is not helpful to know you share small amounts of DNA with somebody if you can't compare trees to figure out where the common genes originated.