Learn Chess is a difficult program to review, because it's a computer-basing training course aimed at teaching the rudiments of chess to novices. Oh, boorinnggg Neil, I can hear you chorus and - yes, to an extent you're right, Learn Chess it a bit boring. But if you don't know how to play chess and you want to learn, then this could be useful.

On the basics of chess, it's very comprehensive, and gives a very good run-through of board notation, the moves the various pieces are allowed to make, and peripheral things like the use of chess clocks and chess etiquette. The whole purpose of the program is to teach a novice enough to be able to understand what is going on when be or she joins a Chess club - and here is the program's basic flaw. It assumes that the purchaser is a novice with that single ambition.

It seems to me a decent basic chess book could be better

Very worthy, but dull. Could help a supervised novice but of questionable value on its own.