Instant Immersion German Deluxe v2.0 [Old Version]

After reading all the bad reviews of the Instant Immersion Deluxe 1.0 product, I almost passed on the 2.0; however, I decided instead to give it a try, hoping that a new revision would bring great improvements. I should point out the fact that I have had 3 semesters of college level German, and would consider myself to be of Intermediate level. Also, this review is being written based upon about an hour of usage with this product. I am not sure what has improved over the 1.0 product, since I don't have it; however, I think anyone wanting to learn German or any other foreign language would be better served with a good German language book (such as the Living Language Series) or a good audio course such as Michel Thomas. One of the most frustrating things is the bad voice recognition. I actually went out and bought a high quality headset with a noise cancelling microphone, however, I still seem to be having issues with voice recognition. There are times when it works great; however, there are also times, such as when building sentences with your voice, that it just cannot seem to discern the difference between certain words (my accent cannot be that bad). This makes it almost impossible to complete some of the voice excercises. Having said that, this product is not all bad, some of the good points include:- I like the fact that during the dialog session, using the voice recognition, you almost feel as if you are having a conversation with the computer. (although you are limited to one of three responses for each question)- The pronunciation practice will try to give you a score (0-5) based upon how well you pronouce a word. While not always accurate, it does help.- The sentence building helps you build your grammar; however, you have to manually access the help to read about the grammar rules. It would have been more helpful for the software to explain the grammar to you as you are constructing the sentences, or recognize and point out the grammar mistakes you are making.- There are a huge variety of exercises you can perform with each dialog, and a day planner can help you keep track of your daily progress or plan out your studies.Overall, I would have given this product 2.5 stars, but that is not an option, so I gave it two stars. One point that was made in many of the 1.0 reviews was the lack of documentation. While this Deluxe 2.0 version did not come with any paper documentation in the box, I did find that a large PDF manual was included on the CD's. I felt the documentation was adequate.

Excellent product. My only complaint concerns shipping. Specifically Amazon would not allow me to include my PO box in any form as part of my address. My PO Box is where I receive mail, not my house. It was returned to you as undeliverable, then you resent it UPS/FedX. Thanks for resending it, however it would have been a lot cheaper for you if Amazon would just let me list my Box # on line 2.

I'd rather have active tests instead of just listening CD's about grammar in the car. But, I know that for some people that works better. I liked the exercises in the talk-to-me cd's. Overall a good learning set...

I bought the French and the Italian versions and loved them. What I like the most is the ability of the program to keep you concentrated all the time through audio, visio and interaction making learning of a new language (one of the most repetitive and boring tasks) an interesting one. I don't think you can recognize all the features of the program in one or two hours. I used the software for 2 days and discovered feature after feature making my work even more easier and interesting. The speech recognition is not perfect but I never found the exercises that involve this feature unpassable. You can keep on aiming for the best results or you can continue if you are happy with the way you sound. I am very pleased with this method and will give the software all the stars possible. (I am on line looking to buy the German one too.)