Technobabble

I wanted to find a PC product so I could learn Spanish.

I first hunted the web for a suitable review. There’s a detailed review at http://learn-spanish-software-review.toptenreviews.com/.

This listed these top four products in their top ten:

• Tell Me More
• Instant Immersion
• Spanish Learning Suite
• Rosetta Stone

In the UK the Consumer Research organisation, “Which?” provide useful guides to a whole range of products. Unfortunately they have not reviewed Spanish Learning products – but have reviewed French products. Their top French pick is the BBC Get Into French product.

So I put the equivalent Spanish product into my target list….

• BBC Get Into Spanish product.
  

Without further checking, I bought the BBC product. However, to my dismay I found that it simply did not run on a Vista PC. I tried setting the compatibility option to XP – this didn’t help.

I contacted their help line and was told “No it does not work with Vista – the Publishers are considering an upgrade”. I do find it amazing that software providers are so poor in supporting the world’s most common operating system on new PCs.

So I checked on other products to find mostly the same dismal Vista support.

Tell Me More

• The web site gives differing messages. The main web site says Vista is supported. The Aurolog store site says XP is supported but there’s no mention of Vista. The Help section of the main site in answering the question “On which systems can it be run” – includes XP, but no mention of Vista. The product manual (viewable on-line) makes no mention of Vista.

Instant Immersion

• The web site for Instant Immersion says it may not work with Vista

The Spanish Learning Suite

• Also not ok on Vista

However, the Rosetta Stone website has a knowledgebase that explains how to run their CD products with Vista. Hurray! The availability of a user searchable knowledge base and Live Chat that they offer really gives me confidence.

So my choice and recommendation is the Rosetta Stone product. They also provide on-line license option.

Whilst researching these products I also checked out more traditional learning options

Oxford University is quite close to where I live. Their Department for Continuing Education offer a 20 week course at £175 (http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/)

The UK Open University offer a thorough course for beginners £410. It takes one year. (http://www.open.ac.uk/beginners-languages/spanish.cfm)

However, I’ll pass on these more expensive options – at least for now.