Bruce’s Unusual Typing Wizard has not been updated since 2006, and while that would disqualify most software immediately, I’d like to make an exception in this case. The program works worked flawlessly on my 64-bit Windows 7 edition and should run on pretty much any other Microsoft operating system as well.

The program offers two options to learn to type. First the typing lessons which starts a series of lessons that help the user learn to type, and typing practice which users can use to practice typing regular sentences.

The program teaches the use how to type. Each lesson starts with an introductory screen. The first lesson for instance explains where the fingers have to go on the keyboard.

The typing tutor then displays words, phrases and even individual letters and characters in the interface that the user has to type. The next letter is always highlighted on the virtual keyboard in the program interface. It indicates the next letter, errors, the overall percentage and the typing speed in words per minutes.

Approximately two new keys are added per lesson to slowly improve the typing of the user. It has to be noted that the typing lessons only work for US keyboard layouts as special chars like the “;” may not be next to the “l” in other keyboard layouts. While it is possible to edit the sentences of the Typing Practice module, it is not possible to change the keyboard layout or edit the typing lesson layout.

Regardless of those limitations, Bruce’s Unusual Typing Wizard is a handy software to learn how to type faster. Windows users can download the application from the developer website.

Lesson one for instance uses only half the letters of the alphabet while lesson three uses all of them. Another difference between the lessons is that you have to type more in lesson three than in lesson one and two. Keybr displays the letters on top and a keyboard below.

Whenever you hit a key on the keyboard it is shown on the keyboard displayed on screen and it is checked if the key that you did press was the correct one. If it was the next key is asked for, if it was not you have to try again until you hit the right one.

I like that you can use different keyboard layouts and languages including English, German, French and Russian. A counter displays the typing speed (per minute I guess) and the errors that you made in this part of the lesson. Once you finished typing all the letters new letters will appear that you have to type again.

You can look at a chart that is displaying your progress over time. It displays the errors and speed of your typing.

I do have some criticism though. I don’t like it that most of the time fake words are displayed. This is of course harder than typing known words and reduces the typing speed. There is also no distinction between upper and lower case and all the special chars are not used as well except for the space key.