14 DAY TRIAL // This program brought me back to those days, over a decade ago, when I was just starting to use a computer. I had Mario Teaches Typing on that Performa 430, and I spent many, many hours in it. Master Key is a similar program, despite the lack of any chubby Italian plumbers, princesses and other such whimsical characters. Oh, in case you missed it, Mario Teaches Typing and Master Key are both Typing Tutors, although the latter, unlike the former, is geared towards users of all ages, not just the kids. Master Key is in fact a program that will appeal much more to adults than it would to children.
Mature Typing Tutor Everything about this program, from the installer to all the features, reeks of careful design and great execution. For one thing it is just as suitable to a home user as it is to a typing teacher in a school. For another, it has a game-like mode, called "ParaTyper" in which you have to type words to open up parachutes in order to keep the the little army men and tanks from plummeting to the ground. For the older user there is the possibility of using any external file as a typing 'drill'.
For the home user Master key will let you set up a user in order to work with it. This is great in case you have several people who want to use the program, or let your kids use it. Once you have logged on as a user, you can jump right in by selecting a drill, which is what the program calls a lesson. Now there are two ways of going about a drill once you have selected it. You can either use the normal drill interface in which you are shown what you have to type and what you are typing, as well as a stylized keyboard complete with hands that move the way your hands should be moving and a real time heads-up statistic of your typing performance. The other option is going in ParaTyper mode which is designed to be appealing to children, and in which you get more points the more you progress and the faster the pace of the game becomes. Unlike the regular drill, there is no way of getting any form of statistic from the Paratyper, other than your total score and level reached. Also, only the top 20 high scores will be kept by the program.
The normal drill can be taken in normal or timed mode. And whenever you complete any drill, you will be presented with very detailed statistics of your results, ranging from a graph representation of your Words Per Minute (WPM), accuracy and error rate (where accuracy is how exactly the text you type matches the original at the end of the drill, and error rate is the number of incorrect keys pressed through out the drill). You can even see a distribution of errors per key as well as WPM per key.
Once you have achieved mastery of any drill, you can print a certificate, which is a pretty moot feature for adults, but something that will help to stimulate young children.
For the typing teacher Master keys is the ideal program for use by teachers for several reasons. For one thing is it a complex server-client multiple user typing solution. As the teacher you can group your students into classes, each student having his or her own profile with history and achievements. Each user profile can be password protected, the teacher password acting as a master password for all users. You can limit the activities your students can perform and in order to keep results private, users can logout after every session so only the teacher or the users themselves can see the statistics.
Master key is also very well designed so that it does not clog the network or require huge amounts of space to store all that information. Another great point is that there is also a PC version that is identical to the Mac version except for some small features. And the program works just as well over the network, regardless of the platform it is running from.
Other niceties There are many small and discreet but nevertheless great things about this program. From the posture guide before each drill, to the metronome that is there to help you get in tune with your goal WPM, to the typewriter sounds you can enable. The settings to accommodate your visual preference and hardware (size and line spacing; and keyboard types such as QWERTY, French, German, Dvorak). It can eve handle huge text files and the program itself suggests Project Gutenberg ebooks for use as typing lessons.
The Good A very exhaustive typing tutor solution that has everything you could possibly need. This same program can be used to keep track of an entire school's worth of typing students, or simply to brush up on your WPM at home in once per week casual sessions.
The Bad There is no real flaw in this program. Granted, I have not exactly set up this program on a network and used it to keep track of my students, but as far as I could take it I found absolutely nothing that I could type here.
The Truth If you need a professional solution, that can do just about everything then you need this. There is nothing that comes even close to the flexible functionality of this program and it is very very affordable.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
