I had a free demo disk of Rosetta Stone that I got at a trade fair, it had the first few lessons of a ton of languages. I found it completely useless and was glad I didn't spend money on it. Some people seem to like it, though.

I'm surprised you had problems in Krakow, andogigi. I had no problems there at all, though I don't speak any Polish or any related language. I had a small pocket dictionary but I rarely needed it. I did meet up with some Esperanto speakers there, but most if my time was spent without them (although they did show me some restaurants that I never would have known about otherwise).

erinja:
I'm surprised you had problems in Krakow, andogigi.

Krakow is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen, but I didn't find a lot of English speakers. Unfortunately, I went there before I started learning Esperanto.

I will say, however, that the Polish people know very well how difficult their language is for foreigners and are INCREDIBLY patient if you are trying. I did not have one encounter with any Poles where they lost their patience with my bad Polish. It is a beautiful language and a wonderful group of people.

ceigered:I only liked rosetta stone for french. Learnt some good pronunciation tactics with that. But, a 'free' version of rosetta stone already pretty much exists and that is www.livemocha.com

I think a lot of it depends on your learning style. Although I've only dabbled with either, I definitely preferred the style of Rosetta Stone to Pimsleur, perhaps because it has audio, visual, *and* text all at the same time, instead of just audio. I still remember some of the Spanish from my brief flirtation with Rosetta Stone, but I've since forgotten all the Greek from the Pimsleur course.

However, as you point out, Rosetta-style courses in various languages are available at LiveMocha, which I too discovered recently.

There was talk a while back about putting together a similar course here on lernu, but I haven't heard of any progress on that front.