Practical, enjoyable and useful.
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Agree absolutely with A Customer (!) - I had to give up my evening class, so needed something that I could, and would, do at home. This is perfect. It puts you in the most familiar situations that you are likely to encounter in France, and allows you to build confidence and language skills at your pace. Every so often, to keep my skills sharp, I return to previously learnt areas yet still find it stimulating and enjoyable. The graphics and activities are both useful and enjoyable. If you want to learn real world French for holidays and visits, this is the perfect starting point.
Only one gripe - and its a major one. The program runs from the cd, so there are noticeable lags between answer and response. Surely it could have been designed to install and run fully from the hard drive?
Otherwise, highly recommended.
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Poor show BBC / Cambridge University
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Being a software developer I fail to see how 'Fifth Dimension', the creators of this loosely branded collaborative effort, can possibly ship something so bad.
Firstly, 0 stars for Amazon as they didn't specify anywhere that it wasn't Vista compatible. This should be a fundamental requirement for all online software resellers.
Installed on XP the software is shaky, but on Vista it's an utter mess. I was shocked to see that after the install, it took control of my CD drive and wouldn't let me use it until I had uninstalled it and rebooted.
The review from "A Customer" about this software is most likely done by the marketing or PR department for this failed collaboration, which just makes this even worse.
Sorry to be so negative, but I would suggest trying else where to avoid disapointment.
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Not impressed
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At first this looks quite good and in part it is good but it seems to me to have been put together very poorly.
Pros
* The Computer software is fun
* The dictionary is good
Cons
* The Audio CD is poor
* The Software seems to only work when you have DVD2 in the drive so each time you use it you need to hunt out your DVD
* At first the graphics look fun but actually it get in the way and soon the fun end up in tears.
* On XP I have different logins I installed it under my login and it runs for me OK. Usually when I install software it is available for my daughter under her login as well. When you run this app runs under her login the app starts but crashes when you try anything.
For me it is a shame that two great names BBC and Cambridge put their good names to this. It is neither one thing the other its part graphical but not fully so as soon as you like the graphical exploring you soon find out that it is somewhat limited. It is very cleaver in its teach me a phrase but these are not detailed enough. I would prefer if they either expanded on the fun graphics and with some fun French and do a good job on that or focus on learning phrases and conversations with a great selection. Alas this is neither and for me I am not impressed. I guess I will carry on looking for a better one.
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Get into French
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I wasn't really sure what to expect when I bought this, but I'm really happy I did! It seems to be pitched exactly at someone like me, who has tried a few times to learn French before, and given up every time because it's just too much effort. But this CD-rom is actually quite fun to do. The computer graphics are amazing and all the different situations that you enter as your chosen character are so much more real-life and funky than you'd normally expect in a French course. eg. going to a music festival, drinking in bars, etc. All the different parts of the course match up too, so you can listen to the audio CD or follow things up in the book or on the website. The only other thing I'd say is that you need to have a set of headphones and a mic on your computer if you want to record yourself speaking. I've learnt loads of French already - I'd recommend it to anyone who is fed up with trying to learn French from a book.
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