With the school year upon us, it is increasingly important to have excellent keyboarding skills. So the FreewareFrenzy is here to help. This week, I will be taking a look at MaxType Lite v1.6.4, a simple typing test program to improve your accuracy and speed.
Setup is quick and easy, and does present the option of either a desktop or Quick Launch icon. When you first open the program, you will see a Tip of the Day, which I promptly turned off. More importantly you will setup an account by entering a username and selecting a keyboard layout. MaxType supports QWERTY, DVORAK, AZERTY and Russian formats. I had a slight issue with my dual monitors; the program would always open in the “center” of the screen, meaning it was split in half between the screens. A minor issue, but one nonetheless. MaxType’s free version offers two modes, Typing Test and Extreme Typing (it’s not that extreme). The Professional version adds lessons, symbol tests, Exams and internet challenges. Let’s take a look first at the Typing Test mode.
To test your typing skills, and improve them with practice, MaxType includes various articles built in to its library. Choose from articles on various countries, ranging from 900 to 4500 characters, song lyrics from Queen, ABBA, The Scorpions and The Beatles, or practice source code typing in Perl, Java, C++, Pascal and Assembler. You can even choose your own documents, provided they are saved as .txt text files.
When you’re ready to begin, you will see three lines of the article you chose at the top of the window. Below it resides a timer, statistics, a speed graph, and color coded keyboard and hands to show where the next key is located. The latter two are mostly unnecessary for the scope of the Free edition, because it focuses on improving your existing keyboarding ability, not learning to type for the first time. But it is available for anyone who is rusty, or is determined to avoid hunt and peck typing.
As you type, the letters of the article will turn to blue from black, so you can keep pace with yourself. If you make an error while typing, it is not simply flagged as you continue; you must correct it to move on. Directly below the article, you will see the key you pressed and the correct key to press to continue. While some folks who value speed over accuracy and rely heavily on Spell-check in Word will be annoyed by this, it is valuable in the long run to key accurately first, and then build up speed.
While typing I encountered what I found to be an interesting problem. You are not supposed to press spacebar and the end of a line of text. The program automatically jumps down to the next line, registering your spacebar tap as a mistake. Once I realized the problem, I could sometimes correct myself, but I could not figure out the reasoning behind this. Poking through the settings menus, I only found an option for pressing Enter and the end of a line, certainly unnecessary with modern word processing programs.
When you have finished your typing test, MaxType presents you with a full report, showing your WPM (Words per Minute), mistake statistics, left hand statistics (right hand is reserved for Pro, an odd omission, but perhaps just another way to throw in the Upgrade logo). There are also two graphs, one for mistakes over time and the other for speed over time.
The Extreme Typing mode is really just a way to race against a virtual opponent set at whatever speed you desire. You can race against MaxType or your own previous results as a way to improve your speed. You can also choose to start at the first key press or a race-type 1-2-3-Go start. As you type in blue, you will see the “opponent’s” progress in red.
The settings and extras are sparse, letting you choose your statistic (words per minute or characters per second/minute), wallpaper, turning on and off the various panels below your typing, sounds, and changing font colors. The Help menus cover the various options well, explaining both the statistics and interface.
So to sum up, while MaxType Lite is not a replacement for typing class or a full featured program like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, it is an easy way to improve your typing skills, if you need to. Practice makes perfect, especially with keyboarding. So if you maybe spent the summer typing “lol”, “was^” and the school year is now upon you, check out MaxType to be ready for all those essays and reports.
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