Mixed
The speaking and the vocabulary building are nice. Where this product fails is in the writing area. If you were studying the writing independently, the program would reinforce it. But, if you buy the program to learn Thai speaking and writing you're only getting half of what you paid for.

Experienced only need apply
This program assumes that you can already read Thai script. There is nothing that teaches you the individual characters and sounds; you are presented, from the gitgo, with whole words and phrases (Thai script does not uses spaces between words). For the first two lessons, this approach is OK, as you associate sounds with pictures. However, the third lesson expects you to associate sounds with written symbols, which cannot be done without a prior study of the characters and some sense of what they represent.

To use this program, you will need a dictionary and some kind of guide to the alphabet to begin reading. This is not exactly an easy task, as many dictionaries either use phonetic transliteration (using Roman characters instead of Thai), or have very small print.

Before buying this program, learn the alphabet, if you can find a good book. Printing out Wikipedia's page on the Thai alphabet may help, although the characters are very small and the differences between many of them are very minute.

I'm extremely disappointed with the overhyped Rosetta Stone approach, and cannot recommend it to anyone, at least not for an Asian language. However, if you already have some background and knowledge of the characters, this may help. Otherwise, you won't get past the first three lessons.

Teacher Taught
I've taught French for 30-odd years and have always wanted to learn an Asian language. No, I'm not looking for a compendium of useful phrases for travel, but rather a working knowledge of the language. Oh, and as a proud autodidact, I want to do it on my own. I've been at it for a couple of weeks now, using Rosetta Stone as my core tool. I've supplemented it with a grammar, a dictionary, and more patience than I thought I had. I'm finding the Rosetta Stone approach necessary but not sufficient -- it's much more useful for speaking and listening comprehension than for reading and writing, the Thai alphabet being what it is. the For the latter two skills, I'm in search of a tutor, not so much to teach but to fill in any ambiguities in the written texts. All in all, given the "at mother's knee" philosophy of Rosetta Stone's method, I cannot imagine the pedagogy being carried off any better. I wish only that there were level II and III versions!

This is genius
Even though i've only gotten to start a few lessons now, I think that this program is exactly what i've needed to learn Thai. Starting without explicit instructions, each lesson takes you through learning Thai in the way you learn your first language - pictures, sound, repetition, and associating words together through context instead of pre-determined vocabulary lists. The way they designed the program is genius! I highly recommend this instead of over-used language tapes and workbooks.

This is the way to learn a new language...
I live in Thailand and have tried various phrase books, language media, as well as an English-Thai dictionary (which i still use for reference) and feel the need to give RossettaStone its just due. After reading the other reviews i could not understand what the problem was. RosettaStone does not use translation (which is the worst way to learn a new language!)but instead uses a "mothers tongue" or acquisition approach. This approach may take some getting used to but once the learner feels comfortable using the RosettaStone method one should see progress rather quickly. Yes Thai language is very different from English such as different sentence structures, lack of tenses, adjectives following a noun instead of preceeding a noun, a whole set of personal pronouns that change depending on the sex of the speaker, and then a whole seperate set for royalty, etc, etc. but this should not discourage a person from learning Thai. I will agree that to shell out the money for RossetaStone may not be practical if one is just visiting Thailand on holiday, a phrase book would meet this need just fine since you probably wont get the tones right anyway but hey its Thailand and Thais are very tolerant. If you are planning on spending more than just a holiday,( like if you live in Thailand)then RossettaStone can be of benefit as well as taking a formal Thai language course. It's also important to keep in mind that the RosettaStone programs are not designed to learn a new language in a week which would be totally unrealistic but more like several months to a year.