Rating: 
Summary: Not Helpful
Review: If you want to know how to point at a blue car or see the ball near the child - this is your software. If you want something that teaches you the "language" including verbs and tense, stay away from this. It has nice pictures and you GUESS what the things are. It never tells you what it's asking in English. Nor does it translate the pictures. I suggest you try something else. I am.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for beginners
Review: Like most other reviews, I have to say that this is a great program for learning basic spanish and developing word and grammar association. My only complaint is that in the "speaking" section I couldn't get pass the red area of the bar and my girlfriend, who is from Argentina, couldn't get pass mid-yellow. Aside from that, the program was very helpful during my begining studies of spanish.
Rating: 
Summary: Rosetta Stone Spanish Explorer
Review: The Rosetta Stone Explorers are intuitive and fantastic! They give 22 lessons of the 92 lessons in Level 1. Explorers are just that: EXPLORERS. This program allows you a trial run of the full program, only the printed script from the full program is missing. The Explorer materials take you to the level of about 3 months of High School language classes. The Level 1 is approximately equal to 2 years of High School or 1 year of University, and level 2 adds 2 more years or High School or 1 more year of University language. This is a real bargain compared to tuition!I've done the Indonesian Explorer, I have given Spanish to a 62-year-old friend, Japanese to a 9-year-old whose grandfather speaks Japanese, and Portuguese to a 10-year-old whose father speaks Portuguese. My Level 1 Indonesian should be here in a couple of days, my older friend is picking up on Spanish much more rapidly than he did with Pimsleur, and the kid's parents report that they are "hogging the computer" to play their "game". If they stick with it over the Summer break, the parents have the option of ordering the full program at a discount exceeding the Explorer purchase price when they buy Level 1 or Levels 1 & 2. The only down-side is: Fairfield Language Technologies has discountinued the Explorer (and the PowerPac and the Traveler) series. There will be no more after what is avialable now is sold - unless popular demand changes their minds.
Rating:
Summary: Not Much Content for the Price
Review: This CD has basically 21 mini-lessons divided into two areas and is worth about one tenth of its charged price. I would not recommend buying it. If you would like to learn Spanish, and get much more for your money, you should look into a book tape purchase. I wish I could send this back. I will surely try.
Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: This course is for those with a basic knowledge of Spanish. It does not explain anything and translation is difficult. I wasted my money.
Rating:
Summary: skip this one
Review: this program is very deceptive. it is only an introduction with two lessons broken down into 11 parts. the company wants you try it and then spend a small fortune on their full length spanish program.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful interactive Spanish program
Review: This program makes a game of learning Spanish. Each lesson isdivided into several different exercises. As an example, one ofthe exercises goes like this: you see four different photographs of people, animals or things displayed all at once and hear a spoken Spanish word. Then you have to guess which picture applies to the word that was spoken. Next, the same four photographs are shown, but a different word is spoken and it goes on until you have learned the word for all four items. The exercise continues until you have learned about about twenty or more words. Another exercise shows you four written words and then you listen to a spoken word and guess which written word corresponds to the spoken word. There are other exercises which vary the use of the spoken or written word along with the photographs. The combination of auditory and visual stimulus makes learning new vocabulary easy. Subsequent lessons move beyond single words to phrases and complete sentences, building on the vocabulary from the ealier lessons. It is a total immersion course, but don't let that intimidate you. We all learned our first language via total immersion. (Baby sees the ball, hears the word "ball", then realizes that Mom is talking about that round thing she keeps rolling to baby...) Children (elementary age on up) and adults alike will enjoy this delightful program.
Rating: 
Summary: Rosetta Stone Spanish Explorer
Review: This program uses the immersion technique and is fine (if a little boring and repetitive) for reminding you of vocabulary you once knew, but fails considerably in trying to understand why something is said that way. For example, "is the car old", is said as "is old the car", which is fine, but "is the woman running" is phrased as in english. Unfortunately you are never given any way to discover WHY this is so, there is zero in the way of grammar lessons. It is therefore very frustrating. In addition, this is just two beginner units, not the language class it is made out to be; quite a scam!!
Rating:
Summary: Overrated
Review: This seems like a good program but it is just lacking some very crucial things which I think are necessary for language learning. The lack of verb tenses is extremely frustrating. Tying in with this is the complete lack of teaching grammar. See my problem with this is what's the point of learning the language if you don't learn the rules of it. Good product but fails in some important aspects to teach Spanish. For a good language learning software that also has grammar turtorials check out Spanish NOW by Transparent Language.
Rating:
Summary: Where's The Grammar?
Review: This software is lots of fun. It uses a unique method of learning where you associate pictures with words. I guess that's how we learned to speak English or our native tongue. Mom or dad would point to a tree and say that's a "tree" or point to a car and say "that's a car." And by associating the word with the image, we learned English - or at least we learned English vocabulary. But there's more to the English language than vocabulary. In fact, there's more to any language than just vocabulary. There's this thing called "grammar." All languages are composed of both vocabulary and grammar.
Of course, it's possible to communicate without knowing an abundance of grammar and just vocabulary. You can walk into McDonalds and say "fries, hamburger" and I am sure the person behind the counter will understand you. But you would be able to communicate more effectively by knowing how to say all of the following: "I would like a hamburger and fries," "may I have a hamburger and fries," "could I have a hamburger and fries, please," "think I'll have a hamburger and fries" " or even "I want a hamburger and fries."
Rosetta Stone is the type of course that will teach you how to say "hamburger, fries." That's not enough for me. I don't want to sound like a cavewoman when I place an order. I wish to sound like the well-educated person that I am. I sensed that Rosetta Stone was giving me the vocabulary but not the grammatical tools to effectively use the vocabulary. It would be unfair to say that Rosetta Stone Spanish doesn't cover any grammar. It does cover some grammar. But the "grammar" is introduced in such a manner that I would consider it "additional vocabulary" as opposed to "rules" of how words and their component parts combine to form sentences. In order to communicate effectively (or at least sound as if you have more than 8th grade education), you need a decent grasp of the word formation and the structural relationships of the Spanish language. That's something that Rosetta Stone Spanish lacks.
And now to compare Rosetta Stone with the competition. From reading the reviews on Amazon, it seems that most people are either fans of Pimsleur Spanish or Learning Spanish Like Crazy. Thanks to a very kind neighbor, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to try both free of charge. Pimsleur is undoubtedly my favorite. The Spanish is very formal and somewhat close to Castilian Spanish. Castillian Spanish is what I require because I travel to Spain every opportunity I get. Learning Spanish Like Crazy is an excellent course and is second only to Pimsleur Spanish. Learning Spanish Like Crazy is suited more for the person that wants to learn Spanish to communicate with Latinos for business (employment) or personal/intimate (dating) reasons. It would have probably been my favorite if I had wanted to learn Spanish to communicate with Latin Americans as opposed to Spaniards.
In any event, I prefer both Pimsleur Spanish and Learning Spanish Like Crazy over Rosetta Stone. Unlike Rosetta Stone, both courses not only teach the student Spanish vocabulary but they teach the student (without the student ever realizing it - which is the beauty of it) the rules and mechanisms required to combine words and form sentences in Spanish.
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