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I just saved up for over a month for the Swahili Rosetta Stone, only to find, less than a week later, BYKI...
I used them both for a while, but I actually like BYKI better!
Which really sucks, because you can't return the Rosetta Stone after opening it, so I just got set back $200 from going on a trip to Brazil next year...>.>;;

I'm currently using Rosetta Stone for Spanish. My version came with like, 15 languages. sweatdrop I got it for free from someone who's apparently very good at acquiring expensive software for free; o_O if I'd known how expensive it normally is, I wouldn't have accepted it. I feel vaguely criminal, now.

Anyway, the version I'm using doesn't just have the whole matching-pictures-with-words set-up; there are several other options, as well. Depending on how you choose to do the exercise, you can work on your spelling, pronunciation, and audio recognition. There's quite a bit to it, but I haven't explored it much, yet.

My biggest problem with it is that it assumes you already know the alphabet of other languages already. With something like Arabic, where I can't even identify which letters make which sounds, I really don't know how much the program would help me. Even with alphabets similar to my own (Polish comes to mind), without any sort of idea as to how letters are pronounced, I'm at a loss. Maybe if I really stuck with it, I'd learn something, but I just get overwhelmed trying the first few exercises and go back to something like Spanish. xd

So, I do feel like I'm learning a little bit, but I don't know if it's very good all by itself.

I don't know how other kids did it, but I learned my alphabet and then learned how the letters go together to make words.
I admit that I'm no expert on the program, but it doesn't really cover the alphabet, it just starts out with words. It's still a great program, and if one was serious enough about learning the language, there are other sources for stuff like alphabets. It's just wishful thinking on my part that they had some lessons that covered that. 3nodding

I found BYKI not all that useful and some of the words they said belonged to a different word.

Okay, so I've been doing my Russian Rosetta Stone for about 6 months now.

I was really happy at first because there's so many ways you can study the material. They've got all these different methods per section. And if you actually sit down and do every single method per section, it really does fuse the information into your brain. biggrin

Anyway, I do have a few...eh, complaints about the system. They don't really teach grammar because they stress learning it the natural way. So they'll just show pictures that cover plural, verb tenses, genders, things like that. And there's really no order or pattern they put them in. Like for example, the verb to run. They show.... like girl runs, boys run. There's singular and plural for 3rd person. But they don't cover I, you, we, or plural you. Well, so far, anyway. And I'm in chapter 2 lesson 10 or so.
Another thing is that sometimes the pictures aren't clear. Or it's confusing what they want of you. Like one time they showed the letter 5, letter 6, 5 balls, then 6. And they said "five." And if I clicked on 5 balls, it was wrong. That was a real " sweatdrop " moment.

But other than that, I do like the system. I can still hear the voices in my head sometimes and it helps with pronunciation. And what I love is that every level is so long. So there's lots and lots of information to cover. biggrin

EDIT: Also, it does assume you know the alphabet already. And the sounds. And with a language like Russian with the cyrillic, that's really...bad.