Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Platinum 20

I have been typing for many years, and have know the basics of touch typing, although I have not been able to apply them; so I have been unable to type without looking at the keyboard. One obvious problem with this being that I would not notice mistakes until long after they were made. So I finally decided to do something about it; Mavis Beacon to the rescue!

Once loaded the programmes is very easy to use; and it starts with some quite basic lessons using just a few keys. As the lessons progress so more keys are introduced. Every so often the routine of exercises is broken with a typing "game" of one form or another. There are also tests which assess whether or not you are ready to pass on the next level.

The lessons are tailored to the user's ability based on an initial typing test. The programme also allows the user to dictate to a certain extent, with the choice of taking a lesson, going to the practice area, playing a game, or customising the lessons. There are also various charts which show, for example, ones progress, or which keys one knows well and which ones need more practice. While one is typing an on-screen keyboard shows the correct finger to use for the key required.

How does it work in practice? With spending only about 15 minutes a day and without too much effort, after a week I noticed a marked improvement in my typing. After two weeks I had more that doubled my speed and considerably improved my accuracy. Obviously giving more time daily would mean even faster progress, but one of the attractions of such a programme is that one can dictate for oneself how much time is devoted to it.

While the lessons are not exactly all fun, they are not tedious either and offer plenty of variety. My biggest criticism is the graphics; they are very dated and rather basic, and it's not a familiar Windows format. The on screen font used could have been better chosen; I had difficulty distinguishing between a capital and lower-case "L". So on these points as far as I am concerned it looses one star; but otherwise it is an excellent way to improve ones typing skills.

This version of Ms. Beacon's software makes typing even more enjoyable to learn. It is really adaptive to how well you can type - it picked up that I was an intermediate typist after a few lessons - you can't con Ms. Beacon it seems.
A few points are
1)It would be preferable if you could customize this software to eliminate some types of lessons - for example I want to touch type letters and numbers but not the minor punctuation keys like brackets -
2)The import facility is great up to a point but when you add the text from internet sources it tends to add weird hypertext characters which are annoying as you want just to type text.
3)The games are basic and not very challenging - I enjoyed a game called typing of the dead which pushes my touch typing to the limit - I wish Ms. Beacon would incorporate something like this or typer shark deluxe.

Overall however apart from these few minor points the software does what it says on the box teach you to type which is what it is intended to do. There are not many typing programs of this quality on the market and she is still the standard bearer.

As a previous review stated, the product stops teaching one keys after E and I. Apparently it was never tested by anyone at the beginner level.

There is no easy way to report this to the publisher as well.

Very disappointing.

I purchased this about two weeks ago, planning to finally learn to touchtype. Perhaps this is the best package out there, but I am quite disappointed with it. The lessons start off comfortably, with a introdution to the resting position keys, followed by drills using those keys. But on my copy of the program, after introducing the first two keys that are not directly under the resting position (the "e" and "i"), the lessons and drills jump to a much more advanced level - requiring the use of many letters not introduced yet. Perhaps my package is uniquely buggy, but since there's no customer service at Broderbund's website, I'll never know.

For a package that's at version 20, I'm very disappointed.

This program offers the basic features that you'd expect from most any typing training program within the last 5-10 years, but offers little else that's impressive.

It has a heavy list of glaring flaws, however, as there are very obvious format flaws in some of the lessons (no spaces after the end of some sentences, etc). The options you choose such as double-spacing after the end of sentences sometimes don't carry over, and never do with games. There are also graphical bugs with the strike-through style option of typing that cause words in later lessons to be offset, replaced, or disappear.

[..]