I purchased the Kaplan GMAT Premier for 2012 with CD. I've completed the first set of practice sets in each area and the CAT. I agree with your assessment. I've struggled to finish the Reading Comprehension set in 25 minutes. I think its designed to reinforce the Kaplan GMAT approach to reading comprehension. I'm fine with that approach until I'm presented with an EXCEPT question. It's quite difficult to gleen what HASN'T been said in a passage using the techniques prescribed in Kaplan. I'd be interested in others opinions on this.

For 'except' questions, you generally have to check each answer choice against the text; however, the Kaplan method should still be helpful, since each of those answer choices researched efficiently from your passage map, Topic, Scope, and Purpose.