Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 15

There are a whole host of exercises on this program, many complete with on-screen hands that type along with you to demonstrate where your fingers should go on the keyboard. The opportunities that you are given to customize this program make it equally effective for beginners, busy executives and admin assistants who want to improve their skills.

There are some people who are probably put off using software programs to learn to type because they find them too impersonal. One of the main strengths of this program is that it goes out of its way to create a traditional classroom feel. You get friendly voiceovers as Mavis Beacon introduces herself, shows you around and encourages you to improve your skills.

The program teaches in either Spanish or English, but it's not all work. In the game hallway, there are eight entertaining games which help to build your typing speeds and accuracy. In one game, you click on keyboard characters to make colorful bugs quickly disappear.

Overall this is a very slick typing program which offers plenty of variety to keep you interested and the games are enjoyable enough to keep enticing you back.--Justin Hunt, Amazon.co.uk

Here is the good and the bad.

Mavis goes a little fast in the beginning to learn the keys. You might need to open another user and just start over again to get more drill time before advancing. This is easily done, and no big deal. Anyway, more drill is always good.

Once I learned the keys, this is where Mavis really shines. Mavis encourages you with her sweet voice, and I like that. She always varies the lessons, so it stays interesting and challenging They really crammed so many different texts into Mavis, that there is always new material to learn. Riddles, Shakespeare, famous quotes, bizarre difficult word lessons, cute stories, and more. She is almost limitless in this regard. Sure some lessons get repeated, but there is SO MUCH material, I am always amazed that there is more and more new stuff I have yet to type and I have type a solid 14 hours so far. This is a Big Plus.

After time, Mavis get addictive, I really look forward to sitting down and typing. It stays fun, and this is key. By getting me to type a lot with it, I keep improving. No other program has as many lessons in it, and will stay as interesting. It is not really the best graphics of all the typing programs, but it really does have the most material to learn from, and done in a way that you slowly keep getting better.

I guarantee you this, if you are disciplined and do not look at the keys, and if you regularly sit down and work with Mavis for 10 minutes to an hour a day, you will become a typist for sure. I never though I could learn at my age, thanks Mavis!