Educational software - no copy protected

March 26, 2007 5:16 PM

Can anyone recommend educational children's software, for grades 1-3 or so, that's not copy-protected?

It's sure annoying to purchase retail software and go to install it, only to find out that it's copy-protected. We're running Windows Vista. I'd like to find education programs for my primary school children, mainly reading and arithmetic (other school subjects fine, too). I'm just a parent of a 5 and 8 year old, not a school. I'm not going to pirate anything and I'm willing to pay full price. I just don't want to buy software where you have to have the CD-ROM in the drive to run it. I want to install it to the hard drive and have it run from there with the CD-ROM drive empty.

And of course, I'd like it to be a well-written program that kids like to use.

posted by richg to education (7 comments total)

Look for older versions (pre-2000): Broderbund's Living Book series and Humongous' Freddi Fish, Putt Putt, and Pajama Sam series were all big hits in our house. None required the CD to stay in the tray.

Also, there's always abandonware.
posted by jamaro at 5:28 PM on March 26, 2007

Have you considered a CD emulator? Something like Virtual Clone Drive makes it quite simple to rip all the kids game CDs to files and mount them as needed.
posted by Riemann at 5:50 PM on March 26, 2007

Alcohol
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 6:24 PM on March 26, 2007

Forget about software. The best computer-assisted learning for kids is online at Starfall.com. It beats anything else I've seen, hands down. And it works.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:57 PM on March 26, 2007

My kids love this and it's free! They also update with new games and puzzles periodically.
posted by Sassyfras at 8:45 PM on March 26, 2007

Thanks for the suggestions. I do have some older software and I will search for more.
posted by richg at 4:52 PM on March 27, 2007

DAEMON Tools has be designed to deal with this problem, and it is free.
posted by Chuckles at 7:51 PM on March 27, 2007