Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a member of the US Army, I have access to all of the language learning software offered by Rosetta Stone at no cost to me. I feel obligated to share my opinion with the rest of the public before they invest $500 into this product. There is absolutely no way you can learn a foreign language by solely using this software. There is nothing included that breaks down the rules of the language being studied. Nothing on conjugation, exceptions, gender, colloquial expressions, idioms etc. I guess they thought the fundamentals were optional. There are just pictures associated with sentences which the user has to match; nothing more. I already speak fluent German, having taken 2 years of it in college, serving to tours in Germany, and having had non English-speaking German girlfriends. I was recently reassigned to Italy, causing me to dig out the resources to learn another language. My frustration with Rosetta Stone left me feeling compelled to share my thoughts. For $500 this should be a complete comprehensive program, which it is not. I feel that the people who sing the praise of this software are those who have never learned another language. The program does a good job of giving you a sense of accomplishment when in reality it still leaves you lacking the skills necessary to venture out on your own. It will leave the gullible and ignorant feeling like they are getting their money's worth. I challenge anyone to find one person who went from zero to fluency exclusively using this program. If one could say that there were 10 levels of learning before achieving fluency, then this product would be good at taking you through level 3 to 6. Had this product been listed at $50 rather than ten times that amount, I wouldn't have felt the need to warn the buyer. I feel that the $500 price tag has people thinking, "If it costs that much, it must be the best". Buy this product only if you already have a good foundation of the language structure and are just looking to review pronunciation and sentence structure. To the program's credit, It does give you valuable exposure to a language and I feel it would be a good supplement to a comprehensive learning program.