I went to the Tell Me More website and noticed that they had a free trial, so naturally I went to get that. On the list of languages, they had
- Spanish — Discovery Path
- Spanish (Latin American) — Discovery path – Beginner level
I hesitated a moment, then figured out that probably the Latin American one would be the best to try and that I could always go back and sign up for the other one later, with a different one of my email addresses if necessary.
So then I found myself on a page where it said I could test my computer to see if it would run their voice-recognition software. Well, that is one of the strong points of their program, so I clicked on that. That opened a popup window, which Firefox didn’t allow till I clicked and allowed it. Then I had to go back to the previous page and come back to this one so that the popup would open.
It did and it ran the test, which didn’t take long.
But all these little aggravations were nothing compared to
what I had to deal with next:
This computer’s browser does not allow you to use TELL ME MORE ONLINE. We recommend you update it by installing Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, or that you use another computer with an updated browser.
Excuse ME, I muttered at them. I have IE 7 on my computer, but it isn’t my default browser. That’s Firefox.
The page also had instruction to complete the field below. And what was the field?
Your email address:
No reason was given; obviously they just wanted to add me to their list. No promise to respect my privacy and not sell my email address, no promise I could unsubscribe. No way, folks.
So I went back to the signup page and read it a bit more closely. It did say that even without IE, I could use most of the features of their program. There’s a signup form there, and so I filled it out.
They also had a box to check that said:
I accept that my contact information will be made available to affiliates of Auralog.
I didn’t sign it.
Then I clicked to send them my email and name. But were my troubles over? No… A screen opened which said:
It is not possible to begin your training with TELL ME MORE ONLINE using this computer.
Grrr! But dang it, their sales page looked really good and I really wanted to check it out.
So I opened Internet Explorer and poked around in the help file till I found where to make IE my default browser. Not sure if I had to do that, but I was getting tired of all these little things so I wanted to be sure.
So then in IE, I went back to the site and went through everything described above. This time, I passed the computer test but there was more… it would have to install some Auralog components on my computer. (Auralog is the name of the company.) So I said okay. Then they were blocked by a popup blocker and I had to allow popups from their site.
So now, some 20 aggravating minutes later, I finally clicked on the form to give them my name and email address. And YET ANOTHER download in YET ANOTHER popup window was required. Okay, I allowed it.
I came back to the program where I was writing notes for this report, and caught up here. When I went back to Internet Explorer, my ENTIRE screen went black. Nada. (That means nothing… you may as well learn one word of Spanish in all this!)
Hitting the escape key did nothing. Suppressing a momentary panic that I had harmed my computer, I tried to remember the keyboard shortcut to switch to another program. Nada. (You know what that means.) So I hit control-alt-delete and was able to switch to other programs. I went to Windows help and learned that alt+tab was what I needed to switch programs.
So bravely I went back to the black screen and right-clicked to see if that would bring any light on all this. There were some settings for Flash. I didn’t have the patience by now for any more, so I just closed IE.
Later, I did get into the program. But my aggravations weren’t over. See my review of Tell Me More Spanish.
After all that, I went to check out Fluenz Spanish. Ah, relief! They never asked for my email or to download anything, and best of all, the demo was excellent. If you’re looking for a good multimedia way to learn Spanish, maybe you’d like to read my review of Fluenz Spanish.
