Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am also an army officer. We get Rosetta Stone for free. I just moved to Miami so I thought I'd try it. I've been using it about 30-60 minutes a day nearly every day for about 5 weeks. I just finished the first of the five levels. I want to be fair because it seems that people like to leave criticism of the criticism. That's a crock! I have learned some espanol from RS but not without pain. At times I want to pick up my laptop and throw it across the room. The milestone sessions in particular are extremely difficult. You watch a slide show of an exchange between a few people involved in some sort of transaction, then... You're supposed to guess what the next slide is intended to say. It might be something like "Hola" followed by (in English so you get my point) "Yes, I would like to buy some flowers". I would look at the pictures and have no idea what question or statement (even in my own language) that I'm supposed to come up with. I just sat and stared and eventually I said (in english for clarity of this criticism) "I would like to buy some flowers." But no, Rosetta Stone just gave me the bell of failure. I was supposed to say "I want some flowers. Do you sell flowers?" I made that up just now, but that's the sort of thing that has me ticked off at my laptop and it's not my laptop; It's Rosetta Stone. I can't even get to the next level until I get past the Milestone event. In order to do that, I have to memorize the answers. This is not a lerarning event, but rather a memorization event. Any of the speaking parts, where I'm supposed to come up with the words all on my own are way too difficult. If I miss even one word, the software starts beeping at me. It doesn't even give me a chance. Sometimes I want to study the scenario a bit before I speak. But no, it starts beeping at me. Then because it beeped at me, I get an "x". RS introduces words and sometimes the explanation is not even clear. Examples are "cumplo" and "queda". I finally figured them out via other methods, but it shouldn't be a chore on my part. Sometimes, a word cannot even be found in a spanish dictionary because of the word form. Why can't I just pause the lesson, click on the word and get a definition and a usage? Speaking of pause - you better be damned quick on the pause button at the end of a slide or you don't even get to pause. And why do we have to wait till the end of a slide to pause? Why can't the pause be available at all times? Another issue I have with Rosetta Stone is continuation of lessons. Some lessons are pretty long. A core lesson is about 30 minutes, but longer if you're like me. I take time outs to look up definitions and usage of words, so we're talking 45-60 minutes for a lesson. Then something happens like the neighbors come over or something. So I have to stop 3/4 of the way through the lesson. Then the next day when I decide to resume, there is no resume. I have to start over at the beginning of the lesson. What's that all about? Why doesn't RS have a progress tracker that starts you out where you left off? On a 5 or 10 minute lesson, fine. But, on the big lessons this is unacceptable. RS is free to me so I'll continue to use it, but I'm going to look around for proper language training.