Typing Speedometer

Typing Speedometer is a simple widget designed for the Yahoo! Widget Engine platform, that comes in handy whenever you want to find out exactly how fast you can type. Evidently, it mainly caters to power users who are not shy of the keyboard.

The interface of the application is not ordinary, but attractive and easy to work with. Its frame resembles a gauge, with the needle indicating your current typing speed while writing text in the dedicated dialog.

It is possible to reset the count or clear text, specify the calculation period (between 10 seconds and 5 minutes), as well as make Typing Speedometer take your keystrokes into account when typing anywhere on the screen (e.g. word processing tools, instant messaging services).

The small app provides three methods for measuring your typing speed: words per minute - standard or actual words, or characters per minute. The standard mode contains a preset value of 5 keystrokes to count as a single word, while the second method obviously counts true words.

As in any other widget built into Yahoo! Widget Engine, you have the option to make the frame stay on top of other windows, to ignore mouse events and to prevent dragging, as well as to adjust its opacity.

The widget is light on the system resources, using a minimal quantity of CPU and RAM. It has a good response time and works well, without hanging, crashing or popping up error dialogs. It also delivers accurate values regarding the WPM.

It is important to keep in mind that Typing Speedometer cannot verify the accuracy of your words. In the spirit of fairness, you should be careful to type them correctly (and use deletion buttons whenever they're necessary), in order to find out your correct WPM via Typing Speedometer.