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There is no doubt that a pack like this is intended to give good value for money. There are in fact five programs on this cassette all aiming at an age of 5 to 11 or possibly a little order if language use is a problem.

The programs are all written to a reasonably high standard and show considerable thought in their implementation. Most expect just a few key presses and the RETURN key is required very little. The first game is "Alpha" in which you have to deduct which letter has been selected from the clues you are given. The clues tell you if the letter is before or after the one you guess. This is a reasonable way of encouraging alphabet familiarity but is not very exciting at all.

The "Vowels" game has more encouragement for the child, a rocket zooms in if the correct vowel is selected. Unfortunately there is little in the way of error correction so a child could type consonants for each answer and not know what they were doing wrong.

Homophones (words which are said the same though spelt differently) are important and can be learnt at this age. "There" gives practice in the use of two of these (There and Their). It is a real pity though that the data structure is not explained so that other homophones could be used in the same program.

"Suffixes" is the most valuable program in the package. There are five different suffix rules explained and practised. This is well done and has a great deal of data so that the same words occur very rarely. There is also an animated little man who jumps (presumably for joy!) if you get them right.

The last program on the pack is the ubiquitous "Hangman" in what can only be termed a very basic implementation which doesn't even check to see if you have tried a letter before. One gets the impression that this was clearly a makeweight program in this package.

With all these things taken into account however, it is very hard to believe that this package could fail to please anyone who bought it. Five programs at an average price of less than two pounds each is very good value indeed. The documentation could be better if there were data details etc. but certainly is accurate and enables you to use the programs easily.

Dave ReederVijay Sundaram