Math Advantage 2006

List Price: $39.99 Discount Price: $4.95

Features:

• Develop critical math skills in 10 core subject areas
• Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, Calculus, Statistics, and more
• Fun and stimulating with engaging interactive tutors
• Bonus: learn Microsoft Excel with Professor Teaches Excel
• Designed by a team of math experts

Customer Reviews:

Old time bugs that haven't changed since the last version... [Posted on 2005-05-07]
This software is technically crippled, and looks like it suffers from the same bugs as the 2004 Math Advantage version. If you have 1gig of memory, you will get an error stating you need 3mb of memory to run this program. Below is a cut & paste of the fix for this. But also, they do not name the directory correctly that it looks for. The software itself uses Quicktime, and you can tell it's age because it tries to load an old version 4 of QuickTime. Right now as I type this they are at version 7. Sounds like they just keep repackaging the same software with a different date on the box cover. And like most software, this cannot be returned once opened. It may run on a Mac just fine, not sure about that.


The full fix for the 3mb memory error:
From the Windows XP desktop, select the Start button, right-click on the My Computer icon, and select Properties from the resulting menu.

Click on the Advanced tab to bring it forward, and then select the Settings button within the Performance section.

In the Performance Options window, click on the Advanced tab to bring it forward, and then select the Change button in the Virtual Memory section.

Click the Custom size button...
Change the Initial size (MB) setting to 4000
Change the Maximum size (MB) setting to 4000

Select SET to accept the change, which will close the Virtual Memory window. Select OK to close the Performance Options window. And select OK to exit the System Properties window.

Very poor design, very dull experience, and unchanged from past versions [Posted on 2005-10-09]
First of all, my background:
I'm a software developer who also used to work as a math teacher at the middle and high school levels. I have a very bright middle-school-aged daughter who's often bored in her math class, and is starting to show interest in learning some math material on her own, rather than waiting for her slow-as-the-slowest-student "honors" math class. (Yeah, that kind of bright.)

I looked around at various math-teaching computer programs. Math Advantage seemed to be one of the few prominent names in the field, the brand new 2006 edition was just coming out, and the price seemed pretty good considered how much material it covered, so I decided to give it a shot.

Oops.

First annoying aspect: the "ten core subject areas" come on ten separate CDs. Each CD contains its own separate program that must be individually installed. Why? Didn't it occur to anyone at Encore that they could write one program with a different data disc for each subject, so we could install the one program and switch between data discs as needed? (That's how every multi-disc game program I've seen works.) Or just load the whole lot onto a single DVD?

Okay, so I grumble a bit and install 10 CDs. Well, nine. I got tired after nine. The tenth one can wait. So I now have what appear to be seven core math programs and two "bonus" programs crowding my Start menu, with one "bonus" program left to install later.

The seven core programs are Pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Geometry, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus & Calculus, and Statistics. Sounds like a pretty thorough line-up. So, I start the Pre-Algebra program. My screen goes black, and I get a dialog box informing me that I need to "Please check that 'Math Advantage 2003 Pre Algebra CD' is in your CD-ROM drive.'" (The "2003" on the message causes me to wonder how much of this 2006 program is a mere re-copy of the 2003 version.) After some puttering, I determine that to run the program, I have to insert the appropriate CD, exit the installer dialog when it appears, and *then* run the program from the Start menu. Ridiculous.

The graphics are cheap, and only use a small fraction of a mere 800x600 screen (further suggesting an older design), but okay, it runs. The opening menu is initially confusing - a big wheel sporting prominent-but-unclickable icons with clickable text labels - but provides entry to "Tutorial", "Examination", "Game", "Report Card", and a few other things.

The Tutorial interface is dry, and the audio voice reads the displayed text and questions (presumably in case your math-hungry student is illiterate). Same for the Exam; functional, but very dull. The Game is a very simplistic steer-the-spark-on-the-wires game that could have been played on an older cell phone, hardly worthy of a remotely modern computer, and seemed to have very little to do with any math concepts. The Interactive Zone has various lessons within, many extremely simple and dull, and some that were just simple lectures with simple graphics, but none involved much interactivity.

I ran several of the other discs (Geometry, Trigonometry, etc.) and found very much the same comments -- and, in fact, the exact same cheap graphics and dull style -- applied to all of 'em.

In the end, this felt like one of those cheap math workbooks you find at a discount educational materials store had been pasted onto my computer screen with a soft voice to read everything to me. If you consider that each such workbook might cost about $4, and there are ten of 'em in here, then the price might seem about right. But somehow, I expected a *lot* more out of a $40 math education computer software package that was supposedly constructed for 2006. What I got appears to be a re-repackaged software that's *at least* a few years old, not at all well designed to hold the attention of young math students, nor any more effective at teaching them math skills than any cheap and simple math workbook.

Overall, I am extremely disappointed. The programs work (after some effort), and they do seem to include a reasonable degree of material (math lessons and problems and such), but the presentation is uniformly and mindlessly dull, and there is nothing to spark or grab the interest of the average young math student -- even if they weren't already jaded by the plethora of infinitely snazzier computer games and other software packages common today.

There's also a strange bug related to its use of computer memory, which other reviewers of this and past editions (yep, it's apparently been in there for years) have described well.

By the way, I never did install that tenth disc. And I'm uninstalling the nine now...

disappointing software [Posted on 2005-10-12]
Unfortunately, I did not see the other reviewers' comments prior to purchasing this incredibly mediocre software. 'My bad. In addition to the frustrating problems with installation encountered by the other reviewers -- and not, I think I can safely say, ascribed to user error -- once I finally got the software working it was obvious that dispite the glitzy packaging and use of the year 2006 in the title, this program utlized extremely dated and poorly designed software technology. The graphics were terrible and struck me as state-of-the-art software circa 1990, the interface was poorly designed and frequently counter-intuitive, and the whole thing bored my otherwise motivated 10-year old to tears. In short, for the money you can do far better. Do not buy this product.

Very bad software [Posted on 2006-01-16]
I bought this software thinking my wife could use it to improve her math skills. I was very disapointed. I tried to load one of the CDs, after clicking the install button, it acted as if it was installing the software, then it gave me an application error and the software locked up. I then killed the installation software and noticed that it did install an icon to run the software. The software was very hard to understand. It didn't have any usefull help. It looked like software that was written in the 1980s. Very poor. I write software professionally for a living. I can tell that this software was a bunch of old software that was repackaged to sell as new. The software probably wasn't rewritten to keep up with newer windows operating systems (I am using Windows XP Professional). Keep your hard earned money and do not buy this product.

It wasnt that bad [Posted on 2006-03-11]
Like so many others' i read the reviews for this software after i had already purchased the product. Those reviews really made me look for the worst out of this program but once i received it in the mail and tried it out i was pleased.(after i got through the virtual memory problem that i had to figure out that is)
I wasn't shocked or excited about what i saw in the program but it looks like it will get the job done for me.
It could use better graphics but as long as it delivers on the learning end I'm fine with it.
I mean that is the whole reason why i bought it in the first place.
The reason i gave it 3 stars was because so far i like what i saw from it so far but as I'm typing in this reveiw this is my first day using this sortware so i really cant say to much about it but I'm satisfied with it.

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