The tree is a powerful symbol in life. Its out-stretched branches represent growth and ambition, while at the same time mighty roots anchor it deep in the Earth. It's strong and silent, Mother Nature's observer of the blur of activity we call everyday life. Moreover, a tree makes a damn good bonfire and a fetching decorative embellishment to your living room at Christmas.

Trees can also be metaphorical, in the family sense, and should you wish to trace your genealogical roots there's no shortage of programs allowing you to do so. Focus's latest effort is a suite of two applications and a collection of documents, the centre piece of which is Family Tree Legends Deluxe Edition.

Its interface is clean and simple, featuring an Internet Explorer style bar across the top of the screen that allows you to navigate around the program with ease. The presentation of the tree is a little basic, although different options are offered for layouts (from the standard format we're all familiar with, to a circular "fan" layout). As you enter the data for your family members, notes can be added and a scrapbook option allows you to attach pictures and even music to the entrants in your family tree file.

Once the masterpiece is finished, you can create a book based on your tree file, containing the tree itself and various reports the program compiles from it (on subjects such as kinship, which lists all family members and their exact relationship to yourself). This tome can be exported as a PDF file. Another welcome feature is the online backup system. This automatically replicates your data on a remote server, so your tree won't be chopped down should your hard disk die.

When it comes to actually researching your family tree, there's a records sub-menu that helps with this task. However, this is rather disappointing in the fact that it's merely a link to the Family Tree Legends Web site. A decent search facility is provided here, although it's limited in its usefulness as it only returned American results in our tests (not very handy when you're searching for your Scottish great-grandparents).

However, the research front is bolstered by the suite's other program: the Internet Research Centre utilises some 500 family history Web sites, providing links to these. The problem here is that some sites aren't very useful and if you do locate some results, you might be asked to fork out money to subscribe to the site in order to see the data in full. Having said that, you may get some mileage here, but the drawn out process of sifting through the many links and pages can be irritating.

The rest of the suite is rounded off with a collection of PDF documents. These include the Digital Reference Library, providing further research material such as the Gazetteer of the British Isles 1904. There's also the Family History Guide Book, serving as a useful introduction in how to research your family history on the Internet, and by using traditional methods such as civil records. Finally, a 30-day free trial with a genealogy Web site is incorporated into the package, which is a nice bonus.

The central tree planning program is solid, although we found the research elements rather lacking. More thought could have gone into the suite's design, which comes across as a rather haphazard "let's chuck as much as we can onto a CD, whether it be Web site links, documents or whatever." Still, considering the budget price, there's a substantial amount of material here and as a starting point for researching your family tree it's by no means a bad one.