Promising you four simple steps - Organize, Create, Archive, Share - to record your family history, Family Tree Legends Starter Edition isn't a bad way to start charting your ancestry. It won't do much of the tracking-down work for you, although for that there are superb Web sites out there waiting to help, but it will help you whip your family heritage into some kind of shape.

It's a program that's one part form-filling and one part presentation. The former is as straightforward and mundane as you'd expect form-filling to be. You start off by entering your own details (assuming it's your own family tree you wish to record), with a screen allowing you to enter the bare information; name, dates of birth and death, spouse, children and suchlike.

Then, using icons down the right hand side of the screen, you can add facts, physical information (right down to a DNA fingerprint!), notes, to-do lists and contact details. You can also open up the scrapbook screen and add in videos and images, all through simple button clicks.

When you're ready to add another person, you go through the same process, adding as much or as little information as you choose. And while half-way through this data inputting process you may crave a Web search tied to an engine that can fill in most of the boxes for you, it's hardly the most arduous of tasks.

Included in the package is a trial subscription to www.thegenealogist.co.uk, and there is plenty in there to get your teeth into. You only get a limited number of initial searches, though, before you need to reach for your credit card.

Anyway, once you've input details of your family, you can then pick different ways to present the data. Again the program gives you simple options which produce agreeable results. You can switch to 'navigate' mode, for instance, which gives you an instant overview of your family tree, allowing you to click directly into a record.

There's also a traditional index of names, but more interestingly, you can choose from the selection of ancestor and descendant charts. There are unimpressive at first, but take real shape once you've input a fair chunk of material. There are also textual reports, a menu-accessible PDF guide to tracking your history and decent sharing options.

It's a fairly comprehensive pack for a tenner, and Focus is being fair in describing it as a starter edition. There's undoubtedly good value here, especially used in conjunction with a good Web site, but chances are it'll whet your appetite and leave you investigating yet more comprehensive software.

As it stands, Family Tree Legends Starter Edition is hardly the slickest piece of software your PC will have met, but it's straightforward, easy to use and a welcome support package for the amateur genealogist.

Few quibbles. This is an efficient, good value piece of software that ably helps chart a family history.