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PRODUCT REVIEW
Treo's Ringo ring tone maker isn't quite a star
By Heather Wardell
Ringo, by Electric Pocket, is a ring tone manager for your Treo that promises to make assigning ring tones to contacts and groups of contacts quick and easy. My review focuses primarily on version 4.50; I will touch on changes from the previous version when warranted.
Creating ring tones
Ringo can use the default ring tones on your Treo, and can obtain additional ring tones in several ways: you can connect to the Internet to download ring tones from your favorite source, a number of tones are available directly from the Electric Pocket Web site, or you can convert any MP3 on your Treo to a ring tone.
To use an MP3, you can import it or just pick it. If you import, the program converts the MP3 to a ring tone and stores it in the Treo's ring tone library, making it accessible as a ring tone from other applications. If you simply pick the MP3, Ringo can use it but the other applications won't see it as a ring tone.
"The new version does not have this feature. I was impressed by it, and am disappointed at its removal."
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If you want to use a particular song as a ring tone but don't want to have the MP3 itself on the Treo, creating a ring tone makes sense. Otherwise, since I can't see any reason to set ring tones in the other applications while using Ringo, I'm not sure why you would choose to make an MP3 into a ring tone.
One feature I feel is missing from the ring tone functionality is the ability to choose only part of a song. If you import an MP3, Ringo takes the first ten seconds or so of the song and loops it to make the ring tone. Without importing, Ringo plays the song from the beginning, stopping when voice mail kicks in or you answer the phone.
I would much prefer to be able to choose a section myself rather than always have the beginning of the song become the ring tone. As I know of at least one freeware application that provides this functionality, it's disappointing that Ringo does not.
In addition, I had some difficulty with Ringo not creating a ring tone after I'd chosen the MP3. It didn't give any error message or indicate that it hadn't succeeded; it just didn't create the ring tone. I was using Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" for this. Perhaps the file was simply too large, as Ringo did seem to be able to create ring tones from the other, shorter, MP3s I tried. Nonetheless, Ringo should have informed me that it was having difficulty.
Ringo's ringomo.com Web site allows you to upload an MP3 and have it converted to a ring tone. The first MP3 I tried didn't work, although it was smaller than the 5MB limit listed on the site, but the second, smaller, one did. Here again, I got only the first ten seconds of the song when the ring tone was installed on my Treo.
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