Review: Mammoet Software Backpack 2.0.2
- Article 19 of 89
- MacFormat, June 2006
A useful application let down by flaws and basic features
Backpack is a free flash card program specifically designed to help you learn other languages. Its principles are fairly simple. Just enter all the words you want to learn and their definitions. Click on the 'Test' button and Backpack will prompt you with the foreign words; you just have to enter the definitions, with Backpack keeping track of which ones you get right.
There are a few nice touches to Backpack. You can label words so that you know if they're particular parts of speech or particular genders, for example. There's an online sharing facility so that you can use other people's lists of words as well as upload your own lists. An export option allows you to save your flash cards as iPod notes or you can print them out in various formats. You can add synonyms to definitions. If you're getting bored, there's the chance to be tested using a game of Hangman. Most thoughtful of all if you're dyslexic is an option for you to override a result if you knew the word but typed the answer incorrectly.
Unfortunately, Backpack has quite a few problems. The most ironic is the bad English localisation: numerous parts of the interface are still in Dutch, as is the entire help system; "Hangman" is called "Play the gallows"; and few of the online lists are anything other than Dutch and another language. Those that are English-based are frequently on bewildering topics (the main German decks contain definitions for "plant extract", "subsistence farmers" and "North Atlantic Free Trade Area"), are littered with typos and other inaccuracies, or contain transliterations rather than native script in the case of Greek decks. The number of different labels available is also quite small, making them superfluous except in a few special circumstances. Testing is equally basic, with few variants available for long-term memorisation.
For a free program, Backpack isn't bad and provided you stick with your own decks and can work out what various Dutch words mean, it can be a useful tool. However, you may find after a little use that you need something a bit more powerful.