I gave a jokey answer at the outset because I have not used Rosetta Stone, but my sense of it has always been that its marketed as the most expensive so it must be the best. The commercials are all sizzle more than steak.
Learning a foreign language is just hard and the only way to do it involves a lot of focus, dedication and follow-up. I think people think they can buy their way into an "easier" method, but I think you can just spend money all day long and still not learn much without the elbow grease.
I have been working on my Spanish lately, having in past years studied it, Italian in high school, Portuguese, Telugu and Urdu (didn't get far in last two but I was livin there, so)...I only ever truly succeeded in Italian (which has to be the easiest language you'd ever study, I swear).
I bought some "learn in your car" cds from what seemed to be reputable producers (having previously bought a crappy set from some dork who musta summered down there and got a pot brainstorm, which I literally threw into the CD recycling bin at El Cerrito); you know, language professors, phds type o' thing.
I transferred em onto my iPod. I walk everyday and listen and repeat for about 45-50 minutes. It's really helping because I make myself hit the pause button each time they give the English sentence and want you to repeat. It's kinda hard work but I feel like I've made more progress than other super-ambitious schemes that involve way more time than I have with lots of bells and whistles.
If such a thing exists in Russian, this might help. I just think that spending a fortune on a fancy program might be like getting into the self-help seminar thing. Always seeking and spending, but mostly, just spending.
My son had two years of French when he entered UC. He began studying German as a Freshman and got good enough in just two years to go abroad and take all of his courses in German literature and philosophy at Humboldt University in Berlin as a junior. He took a proficiency test and scored an 80. Not bad for a freakin hard language and no, the courses in Berlin weren't special for Americans, they were for German students. I'm pretty sure he studied nuance and things in the text that a lot of Germans never even learn, because his focus is literary criticism.
Yes, he's smart, but he just took college-level courses and was super-motivated. And all the while, he was taking a lot of courses in other subjects because his major is in English. Didn't need Rosetta or any other things beyond a course and his books. This convinces me that anybody really can learn a language, they just have to really want to.
I don't know if pickin up the chatter from the Russians is enough motivation for you to learn it. And if they figure out you have, they'll probably go into some God-forsaken dialect to keep you confused! But I think that an audio approach is best for Russian because the Cyrillic characters are just going to be a distraction.
Good luck.
) and I want to pick up the language. She was fully educated here in the states and knows both languages fluently. 
