Overall this program is excellent. The lessons make sense and the progression seems natural. The only major problem with the course is the voice recognition. It's terrible. Obviously if I was a great speaker of Mandarin I wouldn't need this program, but even when I'm really close to the right pronunciation, it doesn't register it as correct. It sometimes stops recording before I've finished speaking (especially on the longer sentences), and sometimes out of frustration I've spoken gibberish, not even close to the right sounds, and it gave me 100%.
So I treat the voice recognition like an audio book. Just repeat, but the feedback is totally meaningless. I'm happy with my purchase since I was able to buy this program on sale.