Modern day desktop publishing programs, and even word processing packages, have vastly simplified the job of designing business cards at home. So much so that it's not even the kind of feature that's talked about on the box any more, as it's taken for granted.

That makes Focus's Create Your Own Business Cards a tough sell. Because to warrant a £10 expenditure, you really want this to improve on the tools you're already likely to have, and then produce a belting card at the end of it, without you having to fret too much about the process.

Sadly, it doesn't go to plan.

The installation process was lengthy, but to be fair, that's because we chose to install all 600MB of clipart and templates that are provided on the CD-ROM. You don't have to do this, and it cuts the installation down enormously if you choose to leave these files on the disc.

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Once up and running, the first thing you're invited to do is fill in a basic form with the fields you're likely to use for your business card. This is a logical step, otherwise you could easily find yourself inputting the same data over and over again. Once done, you then come to the card proper.

Here you're presented with assorted choices, firstly covering the format of your card, and effectively whether you want to put text on the front and back. Then it's onto the design proper, and it's your first chance to check out the thousands upon thousands of templates. And what a depressing job that turned out to be.

On paper, it looks impressive that you can break down the templates into specific professions. Yet we found nothing that would lift the end product above the standard of that which you'd stick on the wall of your local chippy. An accountant's business card with a clipart calculator, or a purse? A personal trainer with a snowboard graphic? What about a restaurant with grim cartoon graphics of food?

These are but a few examples, but there are, quite literally, thousands of further examples we could have plumped for. It's perhaps the grimmest selection of templates we've seen, and borderline useless. And the clipart looks like it was emptied from one of those packs that was doing the rounds in the early 90s.

Fortunately there's an option to start from a blank canvas, but while it's not tricky to get something together, it's not the polished and seamless process you'd hope for. It's certainly not worth paying a £10 premium for it.

In short, Create Your Own Business Cards is a product that does indeed let you create cards, but not to the standard you'd think of utilising for a business. Even with an Event Reminder add-on included, it's not worth £10.

A product that looks and feels as though it was released ten years too late. If you're serious about your business, this is unlikely to provide the type of business card you need.