Well, it's a complete modern multimedia course whereas TY Irish is just a flimsy little paperback. Picking it up again, I understand why I never made much progress before: Not only is the method all grammar-translation, but it's totally like "Okay, first memorise these two dozen verb forms. Then maybe we'll get around to forming some sentences." Somewhere in my papers is summary of verb conjugations I wrote out longhand to save me having to page back and forth all the time.

Now I've got a lot more support: a dictionary, Learning Irish, a novella by Breandán Ó hÉithir, not to mention all the resources on the web and--most important of all--an indulgent fluent speaker! It also helps that I've learned a couple more languages in the meantime and I have an idea what will work for me and what won't. I tend not to use recordings of any sort, which is why I avoid sinking my money into them.