RapidTyping 5.4

Overview

Learning how to type fast is just a matter of time and practice. There’s no easy trick to type quicker, but there are many ways for you to increase your writing speed. RapidTyping is a freeware application that teaches you the proper way of typing, so that after a few lessons you will be able to use your keyboard more efficiently and consequently faster. It has a plethora of useful features such as custom lesson creation and tracking of statistics for reference.

Installation

You can either download the setup package and complete the installation process normally, or you could download the portable application from the developer’s website and run it directly without installation. If you choose to install the program, then you should know that it has only a few number of steps and no advanced settings at all.

RapidTyping is complete free of malware and doesn’t contain any 3^rd-party advertised apps in it either.

Supported operating systems are Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7 and 8 (32/64-bit).

Interface

The interface is very colorful, and that’s not by coincidence. The colors are there to highlight different keyboard buttons, since there is a virtual keyboard in the program’s main window which you will use to practice.

First-timers will have to choose what kind of keyboard they have in order for the virtual keyboard accordingly.

The space above the virtual keyboard is where the text that you have to type is displayed.

Pros

First of all, it is a complete typing learning suite that’s available to everyone completely for free. In addition, it is for people of all ages- from children to adults. The courses, depending on the difficulty, are divided into 4 courses: introduction course, beginner course, advanced course and expert course. Experienced and Advanced courses are available for Arabic, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Russian and Spanish keyboards.

Many kinds of virtual keyboards exist so as to match your own keyboard (QWERTY, DVORAK, ABNT, etc.).

RapidTyping tracks several statistics that you can use as reference. These include words per minute, characters per minute, accuracy, and many others.

The program comes with many lessons that you can either follow exactly, or customize to better suit your style. Of course you create completely new ones as well. Each course has specific goals and different elements on the screen.

The program can be used in the classroom, where it can be easily run on each computer in the network. Statistics are kept individually for each client in the teacher’s computer.

Cons

The program is very stable and has no bugs or issues.

Alternatives

Some excellent alternatives are Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor (paid), Klavaro (free), keybr (free), and TypingMaster Pro (paid).

For a more in-depth analysis of some of these programs and others, you can read our Download3K article “Increase Your Typing Speed with These Smart Programs”.

Conclusion

RapidTutor is a very good choice for those who want to learn and practice typing whether you’re a beginner typist, an advanced typist or an expert typist. It has tons of features, is fully customizable and is available completely for free. Don’t hesitate to get it.