As other reviewers have stated, it's an excellent interactive learning experience for your child. I give it 4 or 5 stars on that alone. But I was dismayed to find that the setup process stuck an AOL promotion on my desktop (my other Reader Rabbit programs also did it). And of course, the unwelcome desktop icon was just a shortcut; I had to search in the Programs folder for the AOL executable file in order to delete it.
This sort of thing is not terribly unusual with free applications that you download from the Internet, but when I pay money for a program, I don't expect it to invade my computer with adware junk.
Another problem is that once you've started one of the programs running, there's no way to back out of it or shut it down before it quits. There's no right-click menu with a Cancel button or anything like that. Very inconvenient if you're simply giving a program a quick test. I had to use the Windows CTRL-ALT-DEL trick to shut it down in midstream.
Still another gripe: the install process does not put the entire disc on your hard drive. To run the program, you have to insert it in your CD or DVD drive before starting it from the Program menu. Remember computers in 1980 with 2 floppy discs to make anything work?
Bottom line: great for the kid, but a pain in the behind for whoever does computers in your home.