Cheap Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Level 1 Win/Mac Personal Edition (Software) (Mac OS X, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP) Price

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Customer Reviews of Rosetta Stone Spanish (Latin America) Level 1 Win/Mac Personal Edition

I really wanted to like this product, but...
I really wanted to like this product. I think it can be a helpful supplement to learning Spanish. Unfortunately it is priced as a premium, comprehensive learning product, which it is not.<
>I think you can learn a lot of vocabulary with this product, but there are numerous issues:<
>1) The voice recognition is temperamental. I had to use three different microphones until I found one that generated scoring above the bottom. The cheapest microphone I owned worked best for some reason. I am sure there are some tips to resolve this problem which I experienced on two different computers, but the documentation that comes with Rosetta Stone isn't that helpful. <
>2) Don't even try to use Rosetta Stone on a laptop as you will have to listen to the constant whirl of the cd drive. This is much less noticeable on a desk top where the CD player isn't right under the keyboard. Also, because of the constant accessing of the drive, the software feels sluggish.<
>3) You can input your name, but there is no point to it. The software doesn't do anything interesting to capture and save your performance. You would think this expensive high-end product would analyze your performance and customize the experience to emphasize where you are week. If it is obvious that, based on response time and percentage correct that you know a particular word well, the program should focus you on where you are weak. There isn't even a way to track your progress and I had to create an Excel spreadsheet to remember which exercises I had completed. For the price, the software isn't that smart. If the experience was customized based on performance, the product wouldn't feel so dreadfully repetitive at times. <
>Rosetta Stone may be a reasonable choice for students of a less accessible language. With so many options to learn Spanish, however, Rosetta Stone is not price competitive for the value delivered.<
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You may be able to get this for free.
Before you pay a bundle for this product, check your local library. My library cooperative, in Hillsborough County, Florida, owns a licence for the whole shebang, every language and every level. Maybe yours does too: it won't hurt to check. I found it quite by accident in my library's online catalog. I registered by entering my library card number, loading a plugin that was provided, and creating a password. Now I can access it at home online and use any set of lessons I want, for the cost of a library card, which I had anyway. Actually I spent quite a lot of time on the French module, but when I got to Paris I had very little occasion to remark that the children were about to jump off the table. I pretty much agree with the remarks of reviewers who awarded the minimum number of stars. (I plan to cross post this to other language modules.)

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Learning Spanish for Mac users
With Rosetta stone learning is a bit joyless, first because the interface is not overwhelmingly convincing, one wonders why people create anything like that when they could do better. There are too many exercises with annoyingly repetitive phrases which block rapid progress, self-tests are not scored nor stored nor compared to previous performance, and therefore not very useful. The words chosen for learning are not very stimulating either. There is also writing control, but also here the score is not being stored to monitor improvement. All in all I have problems moving on because the experience is so boring. There would be better Spanish learning CDs, but they usually are for PC and much cheaper than the Rosetta stone products (see online comparison reviews). Pronunciation control is available, but does the visual control really help me to get better or could it be a bit confusing if the graphs do not really overlap? Maybe I will learn Spanish by simply travelling to South America and being forced to deal with it, or by watching Spanish TV....