Considering the piddling yuan you'll spend, this is a fine program and every Scrabble player ought to have it. For serious players it works well as a practice opponent. (Better than your mother-in-law.) However, as others have pointed out, it has a few flaws.
It does actually play on the Windows XP platform (at least on my machine) but imperfectly. It takes a yuga to load and doesn't exactly unload in a jiffy. It dozes while you're cogitating and wakes up slowly; and if you saunter away from the game for half an hour or so it may freeze up. It's done that on me twice this week and both times I had to control-alternate-delete to recover.
The design is not exactly Da Vinci or even Madison Avenue spiffy. The PASS button is very close to some other buttons. I hit it after checking DEFINE LAST instead of DONE which is about an inch away, and lost a turn. Also the first few times I played I got lost in the opening menu and couldn't figure out how to load Maven, the computer player. Turns out that even though I had signed in I still had to hit the OKAY button (in effect signing in again) in order to get to the screen that allows me to load Maven. If you miss that OKAY you will have no computer opponent and will have to start all over again.
If the "music" (and I use the word music advisably) is not to your liking you can turn it off. The VERY annoying chortles Maven makes after a play, especially the gloating sounds after she goes **BINGO!** with something like "zeugmas," are not to be endured for long. If you want Maven to go first you have to PASS, but sometimes she'll just pass right after you. (A strategy tip: if you set Maven at a high ranking, say 1800 or above, keep the game closed. Maven will open it up at every chance and will make a lot of seven-letter plays, and you will get buried.)
Speaking of how the cyborg Maven plays, remember she can zoom through her dictionary in a split second and find EVERY obscure word, so don't feel bad when you lose. If you set her lower, say 1400 for the average player, she will make plenty of mistakes, such as adding an unnecessary "s" to a word instead of saving the "s" for the next play, and she will EXCHANGE her letters a lot, giving you more plays.
Beware that some words that are in The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary 3rd Edition (don't play without it!) are not in Maven's dictionary, so you WILL get challenged and "poof!" will go your play, followed by Maven making an 86-point monstrosity. VERY annoying.
Still this program is a lot of fun to play, and Maven can make some very creative plays. She plays a wide-open game leaving triple-word setups all over the place, and she doesn't play much defense, which is nice.
She keeps track of all the results and gives you a rating based on your play against her. She posts your top play and your top game and how many wins you have. (Also your spouse's or your alter-ego's top score, etc.) The Review Games program that goes over your games and gives hints (under the MINI GAMES menu) is a little awkward to use and needs a better design. I haven't tried the two- and three-word practice games, etc. also under the same menu, but maybe I should!
Bottom line: until Hasbro gets serious and builds a really great Scrabble program--and they can and they will, I believe, since this is a big seller--this will have to do. It's not bad, especially when you think about the days before there were any Scrabble programs at all. In fact, it can be addictive. Watch out! Play a couple of games and the next thing you know it's lunch time. Furthermore, if you play enough games, you might get good enough to actually beat your mother-in-law. Good luck.
