Customer Reviews

Jumpstart Advanced Preschool [Old Version]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I have been shopping for a fun and educational computer game for my three year old for several weeks now--who would have thought it would be so difficult! The product descriptions and reviews listed for this product (JumpStart Advanced Preschool) are contradictory and confusing, so I thought I would share what I have found since purchasing this game.

This is a 4-CD set. Each CD contains a distinctly different game. The CD must be in the drive to play each game.

Disc 1 is called Explore and Learn and was formerly sold as JumpStart Preschool Classic. This game consists of a school room in which many objects are clickable. Some lead to educational activities, others lead to educational songs/animations. Each activity has three levels of play (after a certain number of correct answers, it will ask if you want to advance to the next level). The activities/songs/animations cover quite a diverse variety of educational skills--I was impressed. However, my daughter and I find play to be very slow and cumbersome. More often than not, she knows the correct answer long before the characters finish talking, and it takes so long for the activity to advance that she ends up clicking all over the screen trying to get it to do something.

Disc 2 is called Fundamentals: My First Adventure and was formerly sold as Jumpstart World. This game requires online registration prior to play. Very little content is offered with this CD. Paid membership is required to access further content. The game is a 3D virtual world that can be freely explored and provides many fun and/or educational activities and interactions. Navigation through the world certainly requires different skills and thinking processes than traditional "workbook style" children's computer games, which is good. However, the world is in constant motion and I worry about exposing such young children to such overwhelming visual stimuli. I have no intention of getting the membership.

Disc 3 is called Language Club and was formerly sold as JumpStart Languages. This game consists of four houses (English, Spanish, French, Japanese). Entering each house leads to a room in which many objects are clickable. Some lead to activities, others lead to songs/animations. Each activity has three levels of play. There are a few fun things to do and a tiny bit of cultural information may be picked up by the player. However, I doubt very much that much of the languages will be picked up. The characters speak in voices that are impossible to understand (unless you already know what they're saying) and the foreign words are not displayed on the screen.

Disc 4 is called Art for Fun. This program essentially consists of several different "backgrounds" and coloring sheets. Blank spaces can be filled in with colors, stickers can be added to the pages, and sometimes text can be added to create a story. In my opinion, this offers only very limited creative options. My daughter has not been very interested in it so far.

One review expressed concern that circles and ovals are mixed up in this program. I have only come across circles in any of the games (never ovals). The circles are very slightly flattened, and it is possible that some players would prefer that they be called ovals.

This product does not contain JumpStart Toddler. I have not come across any player assessment tests. The software was easy to install and works reasonably well on our computer. It does crash occassionally.

Bottome Line: This product was not quite what I was looking for. I was hoping for an educational game somewhere in between discs 1 and 2: a game with a linear story line that requires educational activities/puzzles to be solved in order to progress. I did not find that with this product. Disc 1 is the only game that is likely to get much use from us, and I imagine that it will not keep my daughter's interest for long because it is so slow and cumbersome.

We bought this for our 3 year old, and she was able the pick up on it very quickly! It has helped prepare her for preschool tremendously! We are going to get her the Kindergarten one for Christmas this year.

My son received this for Christmas (2 1/2 years old). He loves it. He gets into it by himself and manuevers through all the games without help. I love the ability to review what he is doing, and move him ahead if I feel he needs to. This is his favorite computer game of all...

For Christmas, I purchased this item for my two and half year old son, who is fairly advanced for his age. The program is reccomended for 2-4. I was totally disappointed in this product. Before you begin to use the product, the child is given an assessment test, which was fairly good. However, it gave you the illusion that the program would be like that, when it is not. Your child is scored and based on the score, the questions are supposed to be geared toward the skills that the child does not know or needs improvement on. First of all the programs were difficult to understand for most adults (my husband and I are both college educated). Both my husband and myself sat down with my son and could not figure out the concept of the games. My son was easily bored with the product and seemed disinterested. He seemed to prefer some of his other computer software, (School Zone(preschool) and Disney for Toddlers. I would tell anyone to invest their money in another software.

I don't know what version of this the Amazon seller is carrying, but if you, like me, check reviews here before buying a product in the store, you NEED TO KNOW THIS.

I bought the 4-disc JumpStart Advanced Preschool at a physical location, thinking I was buying a multi-level PC game for my son that would keep him busy for many hours. I was wrong. The enclosed "game" consisted of ONE world/level that he got through in about 4 hours, and then instructed me to visit the JumpStart website, where in order to continue through the next levels of the game I would have to subscribe to the site for $8 a month.

On the message boards at that site, there are scores of complaints like this one from angry parents like me who feel they spent upwards of $20 for what is essentially a demo game. The response from the Jump Start representative is always some form of: "We feel the monthly subscription is a great value," with no apologies for the deceptive tactic, and I do feel it is deliberately deceptive, for the following reasons.

The front flap of the box has a banner that says "Continue the Adventure: Access Thousands of Additional Learning Games with Membership!" This does not make clear that membership costs MONEY, nor does it reveal that you can only do about a dozen activities WITHOUT the membership. There is some very fine print on the Preschool Essentials panel that says: "Jumpstart 3D Virtual World First Adventure Included". Apparently JumpStart expects us to believe that this is sufficient to inform you that this is the ONLY thing included, rather than what I would have assumed, which was that it was a bonus inclusion along with the ordinary game.

I don't buy that this is due to a "factory error", as claimed by a reviewer on this site. If it were a factory error, Jump Start would be recalling the faulty boxes and repackaging them to save their reputation. This is deliberate deceptive and manipulative packaging designed to drive traffic to their website and generate more subscriptions. The rep on the message board does, of course, offer a refund to angry parents, which is laudable, but it would be better not to rip people off in the first place. I for one do not like the hassle of shipping products back and demanding refunds, and of course no physical store will accept returned software.

I will not buy a Jump Start product again. No company that uses these kinds of tactics deserves my money.

Warning - A subscription service for $8/month is required for 70% of the game. Do not buy unless you want to pay more monthly or have a crying child who wonders why they cannot continue playing the game.

See the message board on Jumstart's website for experiences from upset parents.

We bought this for our 3 year son who is pretty advance for his age. After about a couple of hours of playing it he had already passed the first two stages and complained he couldn't do anymore. When I checked into it, I found out we had to pay a monthly membership online to play the rest of the games!!! What is the point of buying a game when we can't play the entire thing!! Do NOT buy this!! It is a rip off. We just paid $20 for a sample game!! You can bet we are going to get our money back. Anyone who has bought this should do the same. This was a great disappointment.

I purchased Jumpstart Preschool for my daughter. The program was installed on my machine running Windows Vista. The program worked for about 5 minutes, then all of a sudden the sound for the game stopped working. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the program, but nothing would bring the sound back (sound works on all other programs on the computer).

I attempted to get help from Jumpstart through the following channels:
- 3 Emails sent to customer support
- 4 Phone calls placed to technical support (4 messages left on their recording)
- 2 Phone calls placed to customer support (2 messages left)
- 4 posts on the Jumpstart message board at jumpstart.com

ALL attempts to contact Jumpstart have failed. I have yet to receive a single response from Jumpstart, and they CANNOT be reached by phone.

In conclusion, the program simply does not work, and the customer service is non-existent. I returned this program back to the store as defective merchandise.

STAY AWAY FROM JUMPSTART PRODUCTS!!! (1 star is too much)

Don't just take my word for it. Try calling their customer "care" line yourself and see if you get anyone to pickup or answer your call. Their phone number is 1-800-545-7677. Let us all know how that goes.

This product makes me so mad. My son and I completed the game within a few days. It shows other places that you can visit, HOWEVER, you can not play in those areas without going online and buying an extremely overpriced membership. I will never buy JumpStart products again.

Easy to install at first but after a few minutes of playing the sound went out. I tried another day with disc 2 and after a few minutes the picture went out. I called tech. support and was emailed information about a patch which I had to install. After doing so I tried running the game and my computer went black and I couldn't do anything with it, after about 2 hours I got my computer up and running again. I called tech support and left a message and I also emailed them but no one got back to me. I am having a bad experinece with this game and the company so i would never recommend this to a friend.