I had read the reviews for Dora Links before my daughter got it as a gift. We went into it knowing there was a lot of frustration regarding the software. Well, that was definitely an understatement. Having never written a review, and knowing the holidays are coming up, I thought I'd add my opinions to the mix and maybe some helpful solutions to parents. My daughter who just turned 5 is enjoying the doll. Easy to dress, seems durable (tad heavy for a doll, but understandable), etc. Now that she can plug it into the computer, also seems to navigate the Dora world just fine. It is in spanish with sub titles that we've figured out so far, so if you have a non-reader, be prepared to help possibly.
The problem is the software. We spent hours trying to get the software to load etc. We then spent hours trying to download the software from the site. Then hours the next day talking to the company. Here is what we have found out and thought we would share for other parents. This is definitely a toy that I would strongly suggest getting the software downloaded and installed before your child receives the doll as it can be time consuming depending on their server and the traffic on it. The Dora Links server can busy. The disk that comes with the doll is in essence not really the software. It is a program that tells your computer to download the software from the website which is the constant 'content downloading' message you read about. If their server is busy, you may then spend two hours downloading (this is with a cable connection) just to have it drop on you all a sudden. It then does not pick back up from where it left off. The suggestion they finally gave us was to google for a free download manager software. This will allow it to continue to push at their server to download the software and then if it does drop, pick back up where it started. I would not use the disk at all as I've seen others have had issues with it. The 'download' on the website is the software you need and the most updated. Once we did this, it installed perfectly and worked great immediately.
Great toy, very frustrating to setup. If you're reading this, I'd strongly suggest you follow the above way for installing the software.