Rating: 
Summary: Simply an excellent program
Review: This is a great program. Previously I bought another Russian language software program and it was pitiful compared with this one. Anywhere in this program you can right-click on a Russian word and bring up its grammar characteristics. An example might be (noun, feminine, 1st conjugation, possesive case). This is important to know when you are learning what ending a word needs based on that information. You can also hear words pronounced by Russian speakers at full speed or half speed and have the word repeated as many times as needed to imitate it. The only things this program lacks are a dictionary (you can download a free Russian/English, English/Russian dictionary off the internet from Russlang) and a "back" button to go to a previous training sentence. You can tell the program to go to a specific sentence and word (i.e. sentence #202, word #5), but without a printed-out sheet of all sentences how are you to know what sentence #202 says? Even so this is an amazing product and a great deal of work obviously went into developing it and it shows. One piece of advise though. You should also buy a good Russian language textbook to complement this program. Either one without the other will eventually leave you confused somewhere down the line. Just be aware that Russian is a complex language and the more reference tools you have at you side, the easier it will be. I have 3 books and often must read the same topic in all 3 to fully understand it. I give this product 2 thumbs up. If your local library has the book/tape series "Modern Russian 1" printed by the Georgetown University Press. I highly recommend you check out the book for a few weeks. It is a great reference tool. ...
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but not my style...
Review: I find this system too confusing for me. The explanations of the cases are too mind boggling for me to understand what it is that they are talking about. The voice part of the software is nice, however, it's definitely unreliable when it comes to telling you how well you are at pronouncing a word. I should know; just for fun, I said a word in english and it gave me a WOW for my "russian" pronunciation. What a joke! The movie "The Adventures of John Stevenson," although incredibly entertaining and fun to watch, didn't do a thing when it came to teaching me the language. I'm more of a visual learner and I prefer to be taught a language through pictures. This system just didn't help me at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Good way to learn Chinese
Review: This is an amazing software.
I can enhance my vocabruary and correct my pronounciation through recording my voice and compare with the native pronounciatin on the PC. This is very helpful to learn new language. And also, my version came with bonus CD which includes multiple languages word processor.
Considering the price, this has very high cost performance and I strongly recommend this software to lean Chinese.
Rating:
Summary: Great New Product!
Review: I received my copy of this new product today. First impression is very positive. I have bought most all the CD-based products for German and this one is way ahead of the rest. For my money, the others are toys with no depth at all. What makes this one effective for language learning is a design and technology that makes use of concurrent inputs: sound,text,and visuals. And these three sensory inputs can be slowed down and/or repeated as desired. It's not perfect, but it is clearly better than the rest.For this reason, I give it a 'relative' rating of 5.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice program
Review: A good thing about this program is that it introduces you to the alphabet, pronouncing the letter sounds and the letter names themselves. Too bad they don't have that feature for numbers or counting. For that, you'd have to look them up or happen upon each number during dialog lessons.
I wouldn't completely rely on the 'Advanced Speech Analysis' feature in helping with one's accent, which basically has an arrow which points to one of three areas depending on one's accent ability: Keep Practicing, Good, and WOW. Though, it still is nice that I can play my voice back to back to back with the native speaker, determining how I need to improve myself. One doesn't need a meter for that.
The program will also allow one to type Russian characters and letters on a standard English keyboard. Nothing has to be reprogramed for it to type Russian.
The program also exercises listening comprehension along with the reading and writing. They have a dictation game, in which one will hear a Russian native speaker dictating sentences and the player will, in turn, type it in Russian.
The grammar tutorial is also very nice, giving you lessons in conjugation, etc., as well as a short but interesting history of the Russian language itself.
They have these dialogs for several situations that gives you examples of how words are used. They give you over ten-thousand words, all right. They're not made up into vocabulary lists, however. Instead it's made up of every single word for every single sentence in every single piece of dialog in the dialog sections.
Also included is a multilingual word processor, so one can type in their new language outside of the "Russian Now" program.
The only thing I don't like (and is the reason I knocked off a star) is the fact that it is a bit difficult to navigate through. One could get lost without a way to get back to where they started.
Rating:
Summary: For Intermediate Conversational French
Review: I really enjoy using this program and I highly recommend it. This program has very good conversational skill levels. You practice speaking and it rates your pronunciation. It helps you to improve your listening skills as well. It has word games, grammar tools and vocabulary building. The real life videos are average. However, it would be difficult to use this program unless you have learned some grammar. I recommend this program to all intermediate french learners.
Rating: 
Summary: Eh, good if you get them cheap
Review: You will NOT learn a foreign language by one of these programs. The vocab is way too limited, and neither the Version 8 series nor the Version 9 series addresses past or future tenses substantively. I have purchased six of these over the past couple of years, four Version 8 (German, Irish, Latin, Hebrew) the other two Version 9 (Spanish, Italian), and for some idiotic reason, the Version 8s are SUPERIOR to the upgrades. The Version 8s have more texts and thus more variety. LatinNow Version 8 is probably the best program I have seen from this company, good texts of various grade levels, plus you can fresh up on your Roman mythology!These "tapes", and that is basically what they are, computerized language tapes, are only going to be useful if you plan on dedicating time for rote memorization of grammar and vocab outside of the program. These programs can be good to help supplement textbook study, as we need to hear the language and grammar for it to sink in. If you think any one of these programs in and of itself is going to make you fluent, you're very sadly mistaken. I would recommend finding them cheap and working on them while you eat breakfast, then spending 15+ minutes a day per language w/ grammar, vocab, writing (ie thinking w/in the language), out of a textbook. That way you can cover your bases, if you are the self-guided student looking to master a new language to get a head start on college credit or to learn it just for the heck of it. Also, the Hebrew keyboard layout is atrocious and barely functional. I assume this might be a problem w/ all non-Latin/Germanic alphabets, like Chinese and Russian. This makes the games worthless--and the games are probably the best part of the program.
Rating:
Summary: Best used as supplement to other programs
Review: The good side of this program is that you can click on each word separately to hear it pronounced slowly and then you can click on the entire sentence to hear it spoken at a normal speed.
After going through the section with some essential words and phrases, there is a leap to dialogues and also to the language which moves to intermediate / advanced level. If you already speak Italian, but your Italian got a little bit rusty, this may be a fun way to review it. If you're just beginning to learn Italian, this may be frustrating and you will need to supplement this program with other more solid books both related to language and grammar.
On a side note, Transparent Language has additional CDs as add-ons to this program, which as far as I know are only available through their website. Add-ons deal with different applications of language - for business, travel, entertainment, literature, etc. There is one CD from the entertainment section that is very funny to watch. The main benefit from getting this add-ons which contain TV shows (after all you can just go to Italian video store and rent Italian movies) is that you can click on each word separately to hear it slowly and as many times as you like and then listen to the sentence or the entire episode. It helps you to accustom yourself to understand the spoken language.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but spend the extra & get Deluxe Edition...
Review: All of the interactive language software programs by Transparent Language are useful.
This Italian version is no exception. Over 10,000 words, see & hear native speakers of Italian on your computer, and one of the neatest features is the pronunciation analysis - with the ability to record yourself speaking to check for correct pronunciation & accent.
But if you buy it, make sure to the Deluxe Edition - the features really shine. It has enhanced video, bonus multilingual word processor, works with any version or Windows/Mac. Learn to speak, read, listen...through traditional exercises, games, creative tools, and more.
If you want to learn Italian, spend the extra money and spring for the Deluxe Edition.
Rating:
Summary: Eh, good if you get them cheap
Review: You will NOT learn a foreign language by one of these programs. The vocab is way too limited, and neither the Version 8 series nor the Version 9 series addresses past or future tenses substantively. I have purchased six of these over the past couple of years, four Version 8 (German, Irish, Latin, Hebrew) the other two Version 9 (Spanish, Italian), and for some idiotic reason, the Version 8s are SUPERIOR to the upgrades. The Version 8s have more texts and thus more variety. LatinNow Version 8 is probably the best program I have seen from this company, good texts of various grade levels, plus you can fresh up on your Roman mythology! These "tapes", and that is basically what they are, computerized language tapes, are only going to be useful if you plan on dedicating time for rote memorization of grammar and vocab outside of the program. These programs can be good to help supplement textbook study, as we need to hear the language and grammar for it to sink in. If you think any one of these programs in and of itself is going to make you fluent, you're very sadly mistaken. I would recommend finding them cheap and working on them while you eat breakfast, then spending 15+ minutes a day per language w/ grammar, vocab, writing (ie thinking w/in the language), out of a textbook. That way you can cover your bases, if you are the self-guided student looking to master a new language to get a head start on college credit or to learn it just for the heck of it. Also, the Hebrew keyboard layout is atrocious and barely functional. I assume this might be a problem w/ all non-Latin/Germanic alphabets, like Chinese and Russian. This makes the games worthless--and the games are probably the best part of the program.
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