I want to learn mandarin Chinese and I have access to an application called Rosetta stone but it seems like it won't be effective for me. Is there any other programs/devices out there that is almost just as good as immediate immersion like being dropped in a village and everyone is speaking mandarin but me?

http://www.languageguide.org/
http://www.babelnation.com/
http://www.livemocha.com/
http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/
http://www.sharedtalk.com/index.aspx
http://www.mangolanguages.com/
http://www.babylon.com

mandarin is too hard to learn that way go to china and live there for a year

Spoken Mandarin is not hard to learn as unlike English or other languages it has no tenses. However I admit that for a westerner, he may have difficulty in pronouncing Chinese words. Actually Mandarin has only 4 tones. Once you have master these tones, with some practice you'll master Chinese in no time. Learning a foreign language will never be easy for anybody and the most effective way to learn Mandarin is to spend some time in China

I am chinese,Learning mandarin is a funny process.I teach my client's wife to learn English,after one month,she learns much words,however the character is difficult to all the learner,it looks like the symbol.many character have differrent history and meaning.you can try to learn.

Mandarin is so much fun to learn. In my opinion the real difficulty is with the characters more than the spoken aspect. You should take a class at a community college or something for a semester before trying to self-teach. That way you'll have a good grip on the pinyin and sentence structure. Plus, you'll have some immersion on the spoken portion of the language too. Good luck!