If you’re not already familiar with Vedic astrology, MB Janam Kundali will not be of much use to you. The program calculates the planets’ positions at a user’s time of birth, providing the results in North, South, or East Indian styles. Users who know how to use this information should find this to be a useful program, but don’t expect any explanation if you’re a Vedic novice.

The first screen of the program is cluttered, with the Continue button tucked in among ads and text boxes advising users how they can extend their trial period beyond 30 days or purchase the program. Past that, the interface is fairly straightforward, providing simple boxes for users to enter their relevant birth information. The program offers to find the latitude and longitude of the user’s birthplace, but that feature takes users to a Google results page that they must sort through to find and enter the information for themselves. The program offers the resulting birth charts in a clean, easy-to-read format. Users who purchase the program can save the charts as JPEGs. The results page suggests that users visit a free astrology message board, for analysis of the charts; this may be a useful suggestion if you don’t mind wading through a site cluttered with ads.

The software will install a desktop icon, and uninstalling the program will leave a folder in the user’s Program Files. Overall, the program does what it should, but the interface could be cleaner, and novice astrologers will need additional resources to interpret their results.