As the old joke goes, a fat bloke stands on a speak-your-weight machine and it says, "One at a time please."

In a similar vein, a geek software reviewer completes the quizzes in Test Your Own Personality and the program says: "Error, personality not found. Please report to the jobsworth department of your local civil service for employment forthwith." And that's just how it happened, folks.

Not really. Actually, if anything the results that this testing program provided were less satisfying in some respects. It offers four personality tests in the form of questionnaires which are filled in with multiple choice responses. After completion, your answers are then tallied and scored as a percentage, and feedback is given.

The first test deals with whether you're an introvert or extrovert, the second is pessimist/optimist, and the third is on the topic of self-disclosure (how open you are with people). Each of these takes about ten to fifteen minutes to complete. The final test, which determines if you're a type A (driven), B (balanced) or C (laid back) personality is a lengthier affair that lasts about twenty minutes. However, the disc's content is pretty lightweight when you consider it's only going to take you an hour or so to run through the lot.

The tests aren't particularly well designed, either. The questions are fairly typical "agree, mostly agree, disagree" fare, and they tend to be transparent and rather unsubtle (some are even a touch daft). The feedback given from the first two tests is also disappointingly thin, although the self-disclosure test breaks things down a bit more and discusses how you operate in terms of openness with family, friends and strangers, which is a bit more useful.

The centrepiece is the type A/B/C personality test and this does provide some firm feedback, not only rating your overall type, but also a number of sub-categories such as drive, workaholism, competitiveness, perfectionism and so on. Some of the suggestions offered to soften the attitude of a hardcore type A achiever also make for moderately interesting reading.

However, you get the distinct feeling that the whole program has been thrown together in a hurry, as the presentation is bland and what little content there is simply isn't very stimulating. Okay, so one of the efforts is reasonable and you might learn a little from it, but that doesn't really justify the program. Besides, you can find the type A/B/C tests for free on the Web.

Why didn't the developers opt for a meatier series of tests with some real correlation and interaction between them, along with some more detailed feedback? We couldn't say, but we can state that this disc boasts very little depth. In terms of its own apparent personality, it's the Paris Hilton of the PC software world.

The content is thin and the test design is poor in many respects. The interesting section is the type A/B/C personality quiz, but you can find tests of a similar quality for free on the Internet.