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With the exception of the Ozzy book, there is no way to click on specific words or even dialogue boxes. Pros: This system is great for working on memory recall. Its better than watching TV because the child is actively engaged.Cons: Insofar as learning to read is concerned, this product does not cut it. Rather the child clicks on the page and it reads the entire text. Lastly, the thing eats batteries at lightning speed.
They often read the book or look at the pictures sans the pen.Battery life is good on the pen and the technology is amazing. Although I don't think it is that hard, I put that out there as evidence that people who check email and surf to shop may have trouble installing and configuring this device.Lastly, the process of "reading" the story interactively is slow.
This device works great, is innovative and exciting for my 5 and 2 year old to use. The books are okay and the process is somewhat educational, although mostly they zone out while playing with the pen and books and don't "learn" with others.The nagging feature, for all that is good, is that the memory is limited.
Architecture is key to design. My wife is not a techie and could not configure or download the books to the pen.
One can only download a limited number of books onto the pen, in order for it to work with a book (about 4 or 5 books at one time). My kids bounce between the 7 or so books we have (some were gifts).
While the read-back voice is nice, it is too slow for my kids pace and they often miss the story via the pen. Overall we are happy with the product.
Really dumb move by LeapFrog not putting more memory in these things.Finally just some nitpicking - the edges of the books are hard and very sharp. Then my daughter would want to read her old books, and I'd have to reload them - a very slow process.
The fatal flaw is, each page has a button which reads the whole page. This is a great idea, unfortunately LeapFrog doesn't seem to have a clue about teaching children.
I will probably have to take a magic marker to the books to black out the button.Another problem is the toy constantly tells the child to go online to unlock more features, so they can try to get you to spend more money - which means your child is constantly bugging you.Another problem is, I might buy more books, but they put hardly any memory in these things - even though flash memory is so cheap now - so the only way to do that would be to delete the books I already downloaded. Once your child finds this, they will no longer bother touching the words, and suddenly the educational value drops to zero.
Of course LeapFrog could easily disable this function, but they don't give you a way to do it. Therefore I will not be buying any more books.
Another thing LeapFrog could have fixed if they had any kind of QA on their products.
Young children tend to suck on the tips of things. We purchased the Tag Reader system for our grandchildren last Christmas. The kids and us really enjoyed the books and the way the Stylus "read" the books to them. This failure is unacceptable. One has to purchase the book and stylus together for $40. The memory in the Stylus wasn't very good--only 16Mb--so it would only hold a couple books.
In my opinion the Stylus should have been much more rugged and childproof. We also purchased several books including the now famous "Walter the Farting Dog". They don't treat objects such as pens and other similar objects with kid gloves. The newer version holds 32Mb.Unfortunately the Stylus failed in less than 8 months. Apparently one of the kids had sucked on the tip of the Stylus and it stopped functioning. Now the kids have a bunch of Tag Reader books and have to read them the old fashioned way.Apparently one can not simply replace the Stylus.
If you decide to purchase the Tag Reader system, don't let young children use it without close supervision or without providing detailed operating instructions--heh heh, heh heh.
Another thing is that it is made well and durable. If you register on their website it will also email you progress updates.
It is really a great product. My son has never gotten bored with it after all this time.
Have had this about a year. Now I see they have one that has twice as much memory that I will consider getting if the price is right.
We get a new book once in a while. Only downside is that it holds about 5 books at a time.
with information including how many questions were right/wrong, how much time spent on each book and so much more. We use rechargeable batteries, which I would recommend.
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