yup
i use version 3..........it works for me.....its so repetitive that it makes u learn it, it teaches u like your a 1st grader at the start, it gets harder and the microphone thing, when it makes u say the words right or u cant move on. but its not for every1, my older brother didnt like it, but i do. also, it its good for learning hirigana and kanji....but i still suck at it lol, i use the romanji mostly

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try this out. I've been wanting to get Rosetta Stone, but wanted feedback first. From what I've been hearing, it may not be worth it to spend that much money on it...

I just started messing around with Rosetta Stone 3.0. I didn't like the previous versions or Rosetta Stone, but it seems to be greatly improved in the new version.

You get to learn the most important phrases in the world, such as:
彼らは料理しています。
How could one ever live without that?

What I am doing is using the app called Japanese for the iPhone/iPod Touch (it's a Japanese->English->Japanese dictionary), and the Internet to try and understand how the sentences are being formed.

For example, using the resources, I get this breakdown:
彼らは料理しています。
彼ら = they (usually male), those
は = subject marker
料理して = cooking, cookery, cuisine, dealing with something (well)
います = Present

Those males are cooking.

Meh, probably very wrong, but yeah. (･_･)

My thoughts on Rosetta stone vary to be fair.

Advantages - visual and audial aspects are fanastic, and a variety of learning applications help a lot.

Disadvantages - it fails to translate words to you. it purely shows pictures and presumes u can translate it yourself. for example i remember the first time i noticed this, in level 1, there was a picture of some rice and a feather and the word to learn was "shiro". What could you get from that? after a while i figured they were both white, and shiro would probably be white. There have been much more problems like this afterwards...especially on non-noun words...gosh. and dont even get me started on collective nouns haha

overall its a great course. much better than the pimsleur series...though i'm not putting that down at all. it was good too =]

My mom got me the full Japanese Rossetta Stone pack for Christmas, and
so far I've only tried out the first lesson. Already I've learned a small bit,
and it's definitely unique in the way it teaches you. They have you speak
it and learn basically how you learnt you're first language. I'm really anxious
to see how I do as I progress.

A couple features I liked:
* Being able to choose romanji, or kanji, or hiragana.
* Practicing your punctuation of difficult words, and playing it back
to hear your tone and mistakes.


And I've only been through the very first lesson (it took 30 minutes)
so that's saying something of how impressed I am.

Rosseta stone is good but I do ahve some alternetives.
 

I would recommend passport to 35 langues and Pimsleur's Japanese 1 for BEGINNERS over Rosetta stone. I did like Rosetta stone, but it is better for more intermediate user. Otherwise Rosetta stone is great grammar and vocabulary. :)

I had passport to 35 languages before, but the whole thing just seemed like
a big vocabulary book, and it was hard to get into.

I've taken a few more lessons on Rossetta Stone, and I would agree that
the one issue I have is that it does not translate it into english or explain
what any of the words mean. That's how it works though, because you're
meant to learn it like a baby.

I've had to pull up online dictionaries a couple times for words that couldn't
be explained with the photo. It's really not that big of a bother though. I'm
really glad I got it. No regrets :]

Dunno if it's been mentioned, but LiveMocha is a great alternative to RS, and its free. Google it