Quick Easy Learning... Learn to touch type within just 10 hours! This course will offer you 19 lessons, starting with just two keys and building from there.

Interactive Video Teaching... The on-screen interactive teacher will guide your progress from the beginning, giving easy to follow instructions, valuable information and tips on what might be causing mistakes, and how to correct them.

3-D On-Screen Keyboard... On-screen keyboard and animated shadow hands will train you to concentrate on the screen from the beginning without the need to look at your own keyboard. As you watch the screen, the keyboard will react in real-time to every action you perform on your own keyboard. You also have the choice of normal, ergonomic or childrens on-screen keyboard.

Skill Tests... After every lesson evaluate your new typing skills with a choice of five different tests, including speed, accuracy and dictation tests.

Online Practice via the Internet... Practice your touch typing through the Internet while you chat with fellow typing students all over the world.

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich (1/23/2000) wrote:
Excerpts from Disk-covery - True to type
Beeser Etzbaot (With Ten Fingers) or Typing Now in the USA, a CD-ROM in English and Hebrew, by Nikasoft
Distributed in the United States by (TES) Torah Educational Software at http://www.jewishsoftware.com requires
PC with 486 Mhz and above, Windows 95 and above, for all ages, NIS 169 Rating: *****

With the appearance of this disk, schools that teach touch typing may as well close up and go out of business. If you already have a
computer - and know how to turn it on and install a program - you can learn to touch type in English or Hebrew in 10 hours, whatever
your age or previous experience (two-finger pecker or not at all).

There have been a number of previous typing-teacher CD-ROMs, including Keyboard Melamed from TES and Speed Click (also
distributed by the same company, Lior Sharf, for NIS 129). But this one has all the features of these older disks, plus new features,
such as being able to connect to the Internet and touch-type messages to other users of Beeser Etzbaot in Israel and around the
world. It also offers better games, graphics, and interface.

You begin by entering your name, so details on your performance in lessons and on tests are calculated and stored for judging
improvement as you go along. An on-line help menu and a 28-page Hebrew-language users manual accompanies the disk.

You must first decide whether you want to learn to type in Hebrew or English, and what language of instruction you prefer: Hebrew or
British English. The first choice is accompanied by several bars of Hatikva when you click it, and the second God Save the Queen.
In the USA version, the Hebrew is of course with a native Israeli accent and the English is with a proper US accent.

THERE are a number of very useful options, such as the display on the computer screen of a regular computer keyboard, an ergonomic
(split) keyboard, a childrens keyboard, or none at all. You can also ask to be presented with real words or nonsense syllables, regular,
customized or timed tests, and beginning or advanced levels (determined by speed).

There are also five kinds of soft background music, or none at all, if you prefer quiet.

If you decide to view a keyboard on the screen, when you type in any of the 19 lessons youre presented with see-through, ghostlike
fingers that type the same key you have pressed and that let you view the keys underneath. The disembodied hands type exactly at
the pace that you do, greatly helping to improve your hand-eye coordination.

At the end of each lesson, you automatically get a count of errors and your typing speed in words and characters per minute. Once
you have successfully finished a lesson, the guide invites you to take a test. If you do well, the narrator will tell you so and urge you to
go on to the next lesson.

From the first lesson, you have the opportunity to play one of the disks three games. It shows a flying saucer dropping monsters with
letters attached to them; you have to type them out without errors as fast as you can before they hit the ground, and then the monsters
turn over and disappear.

Once you pass the fifth lesson, you are able to try the other two types of games, which are more advanced. One is a Pacman-type
game, in which you are stuck in a maze and can get out only by typing the letters that line the pathways while a creature behind you
tries to gobble you up.

The programs third game is based on Tetris, and its quite a challenge: Three-dimensional squares in various configurations and colors
drop into a grid. You have the option of typing words that move the squares to the right or to the left, or that rotate the configurations to
fit properly in the grid, leaving the fewest empty spaces possible. Thus you have to be quite adept, not only to touch-type properly, but
also to choose the correct category to win the Tetris game.

All three games are presented imaginatively and with excellent graphics. Once you have mastered the lessons, try the dictation figure,
in which the blonde or brunette dictates recipes or other text and you have to type the words correctly.

This disk is state of the art; I doubt if any future disk will be necessary to teach typing beyond this one.