Typing Trainer

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on April 21, 2013

Learning to type is one thing, but typing well is another. Typing Trainer by TypingMaster helps you brush up on your typing skills with quick exercises and games, but it also studies your typing techniques to make specific recommendations to help you improve them. With games, tests, and reviews, Typing Trainer has plenty of features to offer even as your speed and skills improve. You can configure Typing Trainer for a huge range of languages and different keyboard styles, too. Typing Trainer 8.0 is freeware that is ready for Windows 8.

Typing Trainer opens with a full-screen user interface. We're big fans of full-screen displays for educational software since they minimize distractions. But Typing Trainer's developers obviously recognize that not everyone feels the same way, since we could easily change to a Small Window interface as well as configure our keyboard type and other options under the Settings tab. Typing Trainer opens on the Training tab, which offers two of the program's main features: Quick Typing Boost, which aims to tune up your typing in an hour or less, and Typing Analyzer, which tracks how you type as you use your computer, studies the data, and makes specific recommendations to help you with your trouble spots. The quick boost starts with a bubble game and moves through common words, sentence drills, and review and analysis. A few minutes of Typing Tester's exercises had our fingers flying. We could print reports of our results, too.

For the most part, Typing Trainer's tests and games are fun and challenging. We moved through the Training tab and on to Review, Typing Test, Games, and the Typing Analyzer. This interesting tool includes a link to a page of security information for any concerns about its key-tracking capacity. One thing we noticed when we started to sample Typing Trainer's features was the copious help the program offers at the business end, where you need it most, though there's also a Web site, blog, and customer support. Typing Trainer packs a lot for freeware -- something for every typist, in fact. Its quick tune-ups are especially valuable for knocking the rust off idle digits!