Kiran’s Typing Tutor – Features, Pros, Cons
Kiran’s tutor is an easy way to polish your typing performance
When it comes to handling a PC, laptop or tablet with ease, one of the very first things worth mastering is your typing skills. To help you develop these skills, you can use Kiran’s Typing Tutor which was designed by an independent company based in India and the UK.
Kiran’s app is free and uses scientific methods to teach you touch typing skills. What are the core features, and can it stand against other popular typing tutors on the market? We will briefly review Kiran’s tutor and look at the pros and cons as well.
Overview
You may wonder about the name of the program, so here is a quick intro on who is behind it. The app is named after Kiran, a developer from India and has worked for major software and IT companies in the UK and India. Some of his projects include aiding in the development of online broadcasting reporting systems, diagnostic applications, or hospital information management systems.
Where is the link to typing? Kiran’s interest derives from various educational experiences and to help learn new skills for free. He developed a handful of utilities among them is this tutorial to learn to type faster with a focus on speed and accuracy. Some of its core features are as follow:
Highlights
- Various lessons
- Practice new skills
- Test your skills
- Numeric pad exercises
- Activities for kids
- Games
- Statistical graphs
- Finger and key preview
- Multiple users
Rating: ★★★☆☆☆
Price: Free
Features
At the core, you will find basic lessons suitable for absolute beginners and anyone struggling with the keyboard in general. According to the developer, exercises back on scientific data and research. The interface is simple and self-explaining, though apart from a PDF user manual there aren’t many in-depth hints should you wish to know more about a setting or feature.
Lessons – You can choose from more than 500 lessons and tests, however, they might appeal very short to some. A pro is that you will see which finger to use thanks to a virtual finger preview display. It will also tell you which key to press.
Statistics – While there is not much progress data to show, you will see your accuracy rates, typing speed, errors and mistakes and words per minute during training. There will be a brief summary of your current performance after a lesson.
Tests – You can choose from a range of tests to assess your skill levels before starting the tutorials or after completing a lesson. The tests involve paragraphs, sentences or simply blocks.
Other features – There is a specific module for children with lessons suitable for kids aged 4-8. A separate numeric pad module will help increase your 10-key speed. To bring some fun into learning, four games (Duckling, Invaders, Bombers, Balloons) will help you practice specific skills and try to challenge you on speed and accuracy. There is support for multiple users which is a big pro.
Benefits – Like any other tool on the market, Kiran’s tutor wants to increase the efficiency and efficacy of your keyboarding skills. Furthermore, it aims to help reduce mental and physical fatigue that might arise from simultaneously trying to look at the keys to press and the screen output and incorrect finger movements.
Languages and layouts – Kiran’s supports English and QWERTY keyboards and supports Dvorak layout to some extent.
Download and Installation
Downloading and installing Kiran’s Typing Tutor is an easy process. There are no specific or complicated options that you will need to set or configure during this process making it a quick, easy, and painless experience. Once you have downloaded the small file, you can have the application running on your Windows laptop or desktop in no time.
Requirements – The program still supports most versions of Windows, from Windows 98 all the way up to Windows 8. However, there hasn’t been an update yet to make it work on version 10, unfortunately. As time runs by, this app will probably be outdated in the near future. However, for those running an older version of Windows, there is no malware or adware that is bundled in with the download. There are also no annoying toolbars that automatically get installed onto your favorite web browser.
Interface
Struggling with being updated, the interface is visually not appealing or impressive, to say the least. It offers more of a functional user experience, however, this seems to work quite well.
Dashboard – On the dashboard page, when hovering the mouse over some of the clickable options, you will hear an audio sound. While cute at first, this noise might get a bit annoying, particularly if you randomly want to browse the menu at the beginning. Luckily, this can be turned off in the options menu.
Graphics – These days, the graphics may already look outdated, are of low resolution and are not synced with other graphical elements such as text font and color or icons, logos and buttons.
Settings – Generally, there are six menu choices plus a page for settings offering more administrative options. The settings and options do not really offer a lot of helpful information, however, there is a PDF manual you can download from the website.
Verdict – Saying that the interface is basic and plain, and at times, it seems like it was put together very fast and hastily. Usually, this is something you can get past, but unfortunately, this un-cohesiveness will affect the usefulness of the tool. This means that a simple task in the program may become difficult to complete.
Pros and Cons
As we mentioned before, Kiran’s tutor is completely free, offers a high number of lessons, num pad exercises and multiple user accounts. These are probably the most important benefits of the app. However, there are a lot of other free apps available such as Tipp10 or 10-Fast Fingers or Typing Master offering a purely online experience rather than a locally installed tool.
Alternatives – While premium tutors may cost you a bit of money to purchase, these may offer a more systematic approach to typing. Typesy is one of the leading apps here. Alternatively, KAZ Typing with its “Learn the Keyboard in 90-minutes” concept is one to pay attention to as well.
Pros – Though Kiran’s tutorial is not the best free choice anymore, it can prove to be quite useful for some people who are looking for basic instruction on how to improve their typing capabilities. It is lightweight, does not use a lot of a computer’s resources nor does it require an internet connection.
Cons – Unfortunately, that is where the good ends for the program. Typically, a modern program should offer a comprehensive guide packed with tests, quizzes, and statistics that can help you improve your skills and track your progress. Kiran’s tutor will provide some basic statistical graphs but no in-depth features or progress tracking other solutions on the market will offer. Once you have it installed, you are pretty much on your own.
Quality – The overall quality (and quantity) of the lessons, quizzes and tests do not match the current standard of other free programs. Instead of alternating between exercises and new lessons, Kiran’s just teaches extremely short lessons and then moves on to the next lesson.
Verdict lessons – “Practice makes perfect” is common advice among those who are trying to learn something new or improve on something, but this program only offers limited options for you to practice what you have learned. As a result, the retention of lessons is extremely low here, unfortunately.
In addition to that, the program might crash randomly and it slows down considerably at various moments for no apparent reason.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that Kiran’s app is a nice tool and project that once had its advantages because it was free, and this was rather rare. These days, however, there are a lot of free options available that might do a better job of teaching you better skills.
If you are serious about learning to type or improving your skills, it is recommended to rather invest in a premium program or look for a free solution being frequently updated, even though they might come with distracting advertisements or offer limited features compared to premium programs available on the market.
Have you used Kiran’s