I've just finished with LMU and can like the others here recommend them throughly.
I dont know about the other schools but the instructors to me were genuinely interested in the students progress and they go out of their way to give time to students should they need help. there's a wide range of characters, some more colourful than others, something that i found made it all the more fun.
The course being split into 3 phases makes it that much more managable and i didnt find myself overwhelmed by the material. The size of the manuals can be intimidating at first and ,particularly with the technical sujbects, they do tend to teach more than is required for the exam but I didnt find that a hindrance as towards the end they do streamline the teaching with the focus more n passing the exams.
You'd be surprsed how much you retain once your all done. My CFI, having had experience of students from different groundschools, singled out this being the one thing he noticed with LMU students most so make what you will of that.
The new notes have been sized down from the old meaty ones and i spose the distance learners will benefit more from that as with the old notes it really was hard to filter out the bits you needed to know from the unnecessary bits and they didnt have enough pretty pictures for my liking.
Hope this helps and good luck with whatever you decide.