Product Description

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 20.0 Platinum Mac/Win

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33 in Software
• Brand: Avanquest Software
• Released on: 2008-07-20
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Mac OS X Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac, Windows XP, Mac OS X

Manufacturer's Description

Type Better - Email Faster - Work Smarter!
With a complete re-design, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Deluxe 20 may not look familiar, but we promise that Mavis Beacon still provides guaranteed improvements in only 2 weeks.

Mavis Beacon's unrivaled typing training program has great features that will benefit any user, from students just starting out to professionals looking to squeeze a few more emails into the work day.

Dynamic personal instruction automatically places and adjusts the lesson plans to users' individual performance
12 fun & challenging typing games that will keep users coming back
Over 325 practice session options
Detailed tracking & reporting

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing Deluxe 20 is all new!
We've done what we didn't think was possible - we've made Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing even better!

Upgraders from Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 17 will find an all-new user interface and re-designed features and functionality. Here are just some of the improvements we've made to the leading typing instruction program available:

Core Curriculum Improvements
While the core curriculum within Mavis Beacon remains as effective as ever, we've introduced a Curriculum Map to make it easier for users to see where they are in the overall training program.

Re-designed Games
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 20 Deluxe features 12 re-designed games. Each game provides a fun and motivating way to practice and improve typing skills.

More Practice Content
With over 325 different sessions, passages and tests, there is something for everyone in the Practice Area. Content includes passages and sessions from literary classics, historical autobiographies, poetry and more!

Key Features:

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing has been the leading typing instruction application for at least a decade by offering:

Dynamic Personal Instruction
Leverage Mavis Beacon's renowned Adaptive Response Technology to run through the core training curriculum and maximize your improvements in the shortest time possible. Mavis Beacon will automatically place you in the lessons based on your current skill level and adjust your path as you progress through the training program.

Practice Area
Mavis Beacon lets you choose what you use to practice your typing. Select from hundreds of articles and passages covering a wide variety of topics and subjects including literary classics, history, autobiographies and poetry.

Typing Games
With a total of 12 typing games designed to improve your speed, accuracy and/or rhythm, the Games Area is sure to be a favorite destination for any user.

Progress Tracking & Reporting
Mavis Beacon tracks your performance over time and provides a series of reports so that you can understand and review your progress.

The Summary report gives a snapshot of the users' cumulative performance.
Keyboard Proficiencies show detailed performance by individual key, allowing users to see on which keys they need improvement.
The Curriculum Map provides users with a view of where they are within the Mavis Beacon Training Program.
Progress Over Time charts users' performance on milestone lessons over an extended period, giving users a view of how much they have improved.

Spanish Mode
In Spanish Mode, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing presents help, reports and more in Spanish, allowing Spanish- and English-language learners to get more out of their time with Mavis Beacon.

Key Features:

Keyboarding skills have never been more important for students. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing has many features that help young typists stay motivated!

12 fun & challenging games will keep kids motivated
Fun practice sessions including IM/text messages, emoticons, nursery rhymes and excerpts from classic books and stories including Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and Little Women
Import and listen to your favorite MP3 while you type

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Nice enough product - but set up for a US market
This is a well-structured product. It's clear and simple to set up and use (installed on my Vista-based laptop within 3 minutes) and provides a good range of exercises, assessments, skill levels, games and rewards - in the form of print-off certificates - to help users feel that their efforts are taking themselves somewhere. The instructions are clear and concise and it is easy enough to edit out unwanted features (such as the disappointing BLAH muzak that plays as a default to accompany exercises).

Users should be aware, however, that the program is clearly designed for a US market. This does have some impact on the content of the product: the American English spellings of several words used make it particularly necessary for UK users to ensure that they pay careful attention to typing out what appears on screen in front of them... rather than relying on knowledge of how a word is spelt in British English. This probably should make no odds to an experienced touch-typist, however as someone who was not typing trained, but is trying to improve their keyboard skills, I have been finding this quite hard to master... especially since, in some exercises, the difference between a UK and US spelling can result in a whole section of text being marked as mistyped.

Excellent for both the beginner and the improver
It's been a good few years since I did my typing training, so I thought this would be a good way of improving my speed (slipping!) and accuracy (depends on how tired I am!). I also thought it might be useful for a friend of mine who is just starting to learn.

The exercises are definately fun. The length of the practice passages gives a good workout, although I was not sure if the length is variable, depending on whether you are a raw beginner or not. The passages it threw up for me were approximately 450-520 words long. Also useful is that the package has both English and French passages, for those practising for linguistics. The games are also good fun, and quite challenging. What can look like a simple exercise, e.g. road race, proves to be quite challenging.

So why only four stars? Unfortunately, there is the odd tendency for the software to freeze. It is nothing that can't be solved by Cntrl-Alt-Del, but is irritaing nonetheless.

Overall, glitches notwithstanding, this is well worth the price for both beginners and improvers.

Not perfect but a big step forward from Version 16
This is a good program which will introduce you to touch typing and then allow you, with perseverance, to progress to pretty well any level you desire. The program monitors your progress and tailors the lessons appropriately.

Having used earlier versions of this program, the Amazon Vine Program offered a good opportunity to review the latest incarnation. I was immediately impressed by version 20. It seems noticeably faster to load than version 16 and I found the layout to be much clearer.

One of the improvements is the provision of a 'curriculum map.' In the past you followed the lessons which Mavis provided with little idea of where you were going or how far you had come. Now you can see a schematic diagram which shows which lessons have been completed, the one you are currently working on and where you go from here. As always, the program provides statistics to show how long you have worked at your typing, keys which you are proficient with, your average speed and so on. Currently my typing speed is being displayed as a negative number - so there does appear to be a bit of a bug here.

The information provided for this product proudly announces that there are 12 games. There actually appear to be 16! And, reading through the help screens, informs you that your computer must have Adobe Reader in order for the program to run. Apart from this, it does seem to cater for both PC (XP and Vista) and Mac (though it is worth noting that the bonus disk with the Microsoft Word tutorial will only run under Windows).

In my experience, Mavis Beacon has always had a few quirks. However, this seems to be the most stable version which I have used. It is also worth noting that the program shows the '@' and '#' keys to be above the number keys '2' and '3' respectively. By the time you reach these symbol keys, you should be able to easily accommodate this.

The other question which needs considering is how much one should expect to pay for a program like this. For me, a price in the £10-15 range, would seem fair. The typing tutorial itself is very good. With perseverance, it should lead towards becoming a competent typist.