In my humble opinion, The Rosetta Stone system is very good, I am learning Mandarin with it right now. However, the "verbal" portion where you speak into the microphone to match your voice to a native speaker is clumsy. Also, I found it a bit difficult to get started, there are many choices on what to concentrate on and in what order. But you will figure it out. The RS office was somewhat helpfull, and sent me a little more difinitive suggestion on how to proceeed, and my best advice is to just go through the course and not try to double guess yourself, you can get a good background quickly. and the course is not as expensive as the Pimsluer course. I did take the entire Pimsluer course for portugese, and it was excellent, but all verbal. The Pimsluer office was not as helpfull as the Rosetta stones office, however, it could have been the consumer relations girl was new. A couple of the CD's had glitches, and I had a few questions that went unanswered. The Pimsluer system has the advantage if all you want to do is speak a language, Rosetta is better if you really want to learn it. after I finish the Rosetta stones Mandarin 1&2 course, I will redo the Pimsluer Portugese course and pick up the RS Portugese course to round out my knowledge. Good luck in following the footsteps of the Hoff.
