Sometimes a software company comes up with an excellent idea and then does something irritating that shoots itself in the foot. That's what's happened here with Magix's Ringtone Maker, a package that theoretically allows you to take any of your tunes and turn them into a ringtone for your compatible mobile phone.

Where the developers have slipped up isn't in the software itself. Instead they've managed to tangle themselves, and no doubt many interested customers, in an insulting product activation system. It's not that the process is particularly tricky, but where they've really erred is in insisting on a different activation for the main ringtone formats. Why? We've no idea. Surely you should only need to activate a piece of software once to get full access to its functionality?

It's all the more frustrating because the software itself isn't too bad - really quite good, in fact - and certainly eclipses those before it who have tried to tackle the same task. It does itself few favours by initially looking quite daunting, but once you settle down and take a quick gander at the tutorial video, it's actually a breeze. And what's more, there's plenty of help, support and useful options available just in case you need a bit of a helping hand.

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You simply select your music file, isolate the area of the clip you want as your tone via a simple visual timeline, preview it and then export it. You can change features such as the number of beats per minute, you can run up to four separate tracks alongside each other, and a quick button also simulates how your tune is likely to sound when coming out of a mobile phone rather than your PC's audio system.

When it comes to outputting the ringtone, you have a choice of MP3, AMR, WAV and SMAF formats, and a handy button takes you to a link of what phone takes what format. It also tells you how to get the ringtone from your PC to your mobile, with the program handling any necessary Bluetooth and infra-red work (assuming you have the necessary hardware), as it rightly should.

With a healthy collection of samples also provided, and a low retail price, the key success of Ringtone Maker is that it does, as advertised, allow you to quickly and easily make effective ringtones. And whilst spending £20 on such a piece of software is unlikely to appeal to the one-ringtone-a-year club, for the regular downloader it could potentially save them a small fortune. Only you know which camp you fall into...

A utility that does what it says, and charges you a fair price for its services. It appears more complicated than it is, and contains an unpleasant activation system, but does offer good value and strong results.