i think you shuld go through it at a reasonable pace - spend the time you need and DONT worry about the rating due to time. if you understand the principle and get the answer, then move on. if you don't, study it until you do.
i'm curoius as to what others think as well :)
Yes, good comments, both, and thanks. I'll not worry about the time--or my Mentor rating, for that matter. I think Mentor is a terrific program. The people who put it together obviously put a lot of thought into it. It really does feel like I have a GM sitting across the board from me, giving me a lesson. Very fun, and I think, effective.
As to technique in playing through a Mentor lesson: My procedure up to now has been to read all of the intro material first, then tackle the position, reading each comment as it comes up. I've naturally been trying to do this all quickly to maximize my Mentor rating (since there IS one)--but I'm not sure why I should care about that rating--or about the time I take--especially, since I enjoy 3-day-per-move chess best anyway. After I finish each lesson, I've been replaying it immediately, really studying all of the comments and trying the side lines I didn't get to. This is pretty tedious, though, and I don't get through very many lessons per week this way. (My work takes up about 55 hours a week, including commute.)
But maybe I'd be better off just blasting through a maximum number of lessons each week? Does anyone have any thoughts--based on your experience with Mentor--as to the most efficient way to use each lesson with the idea of general chess improvement? (My current Chess.com rating is about 1600.)