I recently read a statistic that about 66% of people worldwide can at least communicate reasonably in more than one language, pretty interesting.

It has been a goal of mine for quite some time to learn Mandarin Chinese but just recently I've decided to actually begin. Does anyone have experience learning this as a second language? What are the best options to learn?

A classroom setting would sort of be un-doable so I'm thinking along the lines of software. Has anyone tried Rosetta Stone or L-lingo? I hear Rosetta Stone is good for most languages but L Lingo is slightly better for Asian languages. Any thoughts on why they might be different? Does anyone have experience with either program?

Any info would help.