When I first got my cell phone, quickly I realized how easy it was to personalize this little gadget and make it my own. One of my favorite ways to claim it is to assign different ringtones to the various people in my address book. A mushy one for my wife, silly one for my daughter, hickish for my college buddies and generic for all others.

When I started assigning these tones I saw just how limited my ringtone menu is so I started shopping for ringtones. At $2.99 a pop the tones from cingular started adding up and I found myself sleeping on the couch b/c my wife was fuming at the size of our cell phone bill due to me feeding my cell phone new ringtones. I needed another option.

So off to the internet I flew with no delay. I found many services available offering 10 -20 free ringtones. I signed up for a couple of the ringtone services and found the selection was very good and they made it real easy to upload the tones. After selecting the tones you want, they are sent via MMS (multi media service) straight to your cell phone, just like a text message.

After trying out these services, although I was happy I wanted more. So off to the internet I flew again and this time did a little advanced search engine query which turned up many, many sources of free ringtones. It turns out, the net is full of websites who, for some reason, leave their host computers web directories open for browsing. Using this advanced query, I was able to find handfuls of open ringtone indexes containing not all, but some of the ringtones I have been looking for.

I don't make these open indexes my sole source of ringtones but I have downloaded a couple for my own use. In addition, I have indexed the open indexes and post them to http://free-cell-phone-ringtones.thinwebs.net, to let others know about my new ringtone scavenger hunt hobby and what I have found so far. Users will find links to these open indexes on the site, which is formatted in blog style, as well as many other great sources of free and low cost ringtones. Some deals are better than others so I encourage the website users to shop around and compare the deals offered on the site.

The pros and cons of the freely open indexes are that the tones are free but you need to connect your cell phone to the computer to load the tones and the selection is limited to what the index creator has uploaded. The pros of the free and low cost ringtone services listed are that the selection is vast and the tones are sent directly to your cell phone for a very small fee for the convenience and selection. You decide which works better for you or you can do what I have done and use both.

Whichever way you decide to take while building your ringtone collection, have fun with it. Ringtones are a cheap and easy way to personalize your cell phone and make it unique, just like you.