One of the main advantages of computer-based courses is that you can record yourself speaking then play it back and listen to how it compares with the native speaker. It would be better if the program repeated the original recording after you've heard your own, but it doesn't. There is a speech recognition thing that indicates how well you have done, but it is not accurate: you can say the wrong word entirely and it will sometimes indicate "good".

The box says "learn a new language the way you learned your first language" and "you learned your first language easily and naturally". This is nonsense. We do not learn additional languages the way young children learn their first language, and anyway it was never effortless - we've just forgotten how hard it was. What they mean is that they don't explain anything: you have to figure out the grammar for yourself. That may or may not be a good thing.

I had tried a computer-based language course before ("Tell Me More Italian") and found that it was rubbish, so I was wary of getting another. Well, Rosetta Stone is much better than Tell Me More. You may not want to use this as your only source of instruction, but to supplement other methods it's quite good. Having also done some pure audio courses (just listening and speaking), I now wanted to extend my vocabulary and improve my reading and writing skills. Unfortunately, the program assumes you have a non-standard keyboard layout (qzerty not qwerty) so you can't use the keyboard for any of the written work. In Lesson 1 Question 1 the answer is "bambino" but if you type that on an ordinary English keyboard it comes out as "ba,bino". I emailed Rosetta Stone about this. They replied "This is a common problem" and suggested that I should look at the picture of a keyboard on screen and press the keys on my keyboard that are in the corresponding position, even though "the markings may not be the same". I found this reply astonishing. If it were cheap software I could accept it, but having paid nearly two hundred pounds I expect the program to work properly.

If you are happy to omit the written work, or if you are willing to use the on-screen keyboard, then you might find Rosetta Stone useful. Personally, I don't, and the search for a good computer-based language course continues.