Improve Your Typing Skills With These Top Online Tutors.

May 5th, 2008 PC Software

improve your typing skills

Around 8 years ago I taught myself to touch type, as it always seemed to take me ages to type out a letter or an email, and to honest I hated typing. It went something like this, look for the letter on the keyboard, pause, press the key, look for the letter, pause, press, and so on, it was a painful experience I can tell you.

With the help of some Typing tutor software that I bought from Amazon I got started, and after a few weeks became a very proficient typist. I even got a job because I could type.
Overtime, I noticed that my typing had become a bit sloppy, and needed improving, so I decided to brush up on my keyboard skills.
After doing a search on Google, I was quite surprised by the amount of online Typing Tutors that came up, and after trying some, realized just how poor some of them were. So over a few weeks I tested many of them, and have listed what I consider in my humble opinion to be the top three.

Typeonline was the most complete online typing tutor that was tested. It has a very good section on health and safety, which covers RSI, your sitting posture, and other topics, it’s worth taking a look before you get started.
The site layout is simple and very easy to navigate around, and whether you are a beginner or an advanced user, Typeonline has an abundance of activities and training for you.

5 Minutes to Spare? Then Why Don’t You Improve Your Typing Skills.

If you are a beginner, then Typeonline will take you right from the very start, showing you which finger corresponds to which keys, and then lead you step by step through each lesson.
For advanced users there are many lessons to choose from, and each lesson has 10 exercises which become progressively harder. The exercises are selected from a drop-down box, and there are only about a dozen words in each exercise to complete, so they don’t take very long to finish.
With Typeonline you can find out your typing speed, your accuracy percentage, and also review your mistakes.
Although Typeonline has many lessons and exercises, I felt that the exercises could have been made a little bit more fun. Don’t get me wrong, overall I highly recommend Typeonline as your first choice, because its straightforward, simple to use, and if you just want to improve your typing, you can skip the early lessons.
Click here to get started.

Powertyping, has many exercises, tests, and games, but is not quite as comprehensive as Typeonline. However, I thoroughly enjoyed using this online tutor, but Typeonline has more practice lessons.
Just like Typeonline, whether you are a beginner or advanced user there is something here for you.

5 Minutes to Spare? Then Why Don’t You Improve Your Typing Skills.

After a few clicks you will find the page for beginners which shows you how to get started with the keyboard, and also which finger goes with each key.
There are 13 exercises on Powertyping, covering everything from letters to numbers and symbols, and you can repeat the exercises over and over until your heart is content.
At the end of each exercise you are automatically showed your WPM (words per minute,) any errors you have made, and also how many words you typed, which I found very informative and helpful.
The best thing I liked about PowerTyping were the games, which were fun and are aimed at improving your typing skills and speed. The games have various levels of difficulty and even background music (which can be switched off.)
Overall Powertyping was fun, informative and if you just want to brush up on your typing skills the games are a great addition.

To get started on Powertyping click here.

Peters Online Typing Course is also excellent if you just want to improve your typing skills, or you are a beginner, as it will take you step by step through the lessons in a very clear and concise manner.
Peters Online typing course starts off with ‘Principles for Effective Learning,’ then goes on to ‘Typing Ergonomics’ followed by ‘Which fingers Go Where,’ eventually leading you on to the typing lessons.

Why Don’t You Improve Your Typing Skills.

Again it doesn’t offer as many exercises as TypeOnline, but there are 18 lessons in total, which should help anyone to become a competent typist, fluent with all the keys that really matter.

Overall this site is simple to use, and whether you just need to brush up on your typing skills, or move from two-finger typing to full-blown touch typing, then Peters online typing course will help you.

Click here to go to the website.

You will find that spending a few minutes everyday on one of these tutor websites will dramatically improve your typing skills, as I say to my little girl,”Pratice makes perfect.” Have fun.

Popularity: 9% [?]

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Best Selling Computer Systems and Equipment

May 2nd, 2008 Technology

The below article was posted last week, however a lot of you where having trouble opening the page due to the widgets that were used. You will be glad to know that I have made some changes and now the page will load quite quickly.

When we are looking to buy something, either for ourselves or someone else, its always interesting to know whats popular and what products are good sellers, because this can influence what we eventually purchase. This is especially true if the product receives good reviews and the price is right.
I have compiled a list of the best selling computer systems and equipment from Amazon, which will give you a good idea as to what other users are buying.

Top 10 Best Selling Computer Systems.
Best Selling Computer Systems and Equipment
Its quite interesting to see that the top 5 selling computer systems are from Apple, it just goes to show that people do go for eye candy as well as functionality.

1. Apple iMac Desktop with 24″ Display (2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive)

2. Apple iMac Desktop with 20″ Display (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

3.Apple iMac Desktop with 24″ Display (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

4. Apple iMac Desktop with 20″ Display (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

5.Apple iMac Desktop with 20″ Display (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)

6.Apple Mac mini (1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, Combo Drive)

7.Compaq Presario Desktop PC (1.8 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

8.Apple Mac Pro Desktop (Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors, 2 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, 16x SuperDrive)

9.HP Pavilion Desktop PC (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 750 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

10.Compaq Presario Desktop PC (2.0 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core E2180 Processor, 2 GB RAM, 500 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, Vista Premium)

Top 10 Most Popular External Hard Drives.
Best Selling Computer Systems and Equipment
Not only do Hard Drives have a much bigger capicity, but they are also becoming much cheaper.

1.Seagate ST3500641AS-RK Barracuda 500 GB SATA NCQ Internal Hard Drive

2.Western Digital WD3200KSRTL Caviar 320 GB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive

3.Seagate ST9160821A-RK 160 GB Ultra ATA 2.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive, for your Notebook or Laptop

4.Western Digital WD2500KSRTL Caviar SE16 250 GB SATA 3.5-Inch Hard Drive Kit

5.Seagate ST3160023A-RK Internal Barracuda 7200 160 GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive

6.Western Digital WD800BB 80GB 7,200RPM Ultra ATA/100

7.Seagate ST3500641A-RK Barracuda 500 GB Ultra ATA/100 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive

8.Western Digital 160GB EIDE Internal Hard Drive with 8MB Cache

9.Western Digital WD1600JSRTL Caviar 160GB SATA Hard Drive

10.Seagate ST3750640A-RK Barracuda 750 GB Ultra-ATA/100 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive

Top 10 Best Selling External USB 2.0 Hard Drives.
Best Selling Computer Systems and Equipment
More and more people are using external hard drives, I find mine indispensable. Some of them don’t even need external power supplies as they use the power from the PC or Laptop.

1.Iomega Desktop Hard Drive 500 GB Hi-Speed USB 2.0 External Hard Drive

2. SimpleTech SP-U35/500 SimpleDrive 500 GB 3.5″ USB 2.0 Hard Drive designed by Pininfarina (Black)

3.LaCie 160 GB Rugged Hard Drive USB 2.0/FireWire400/FireWire800 8MB Cache

4.SimpleTech SP-U25/250L 250 GB Portable Hard Drive - Blue

5.Iomega Portable Hard Drive, FireWire 400/USB 2.0, 160GB/>

6.Iomega UltraMax Hard Drive, FireWire 400/USB 2.0, 500GB

7.Toshiba HDDR320E03X 320GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive/>

8.Iomega eGo Portable Hard Drive, USB 2.0, 160GB Cherry Red/>

9.Toshiba HDDR250E03X 250GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive

10.Western Digital WDXMS1200TN Passport 120 GB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive

Top 5 most Popular Keyboards
Best Selling Computer Systems and Equipment
1.Apple Keyboard Kit

2.Logitech Cordless Desktop EX110 ( 967561-0403 )

3.Microsoft Natural Ergo Keyboard 4000/>

4.Logitech NEW G15 Gaming Keyboard

5.Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 ( B2L-00002 )

Top 5 Most Popular MiceBest Selling Computer Systems and Equipment

1.Logitech VX Nano Cordless Laser Mouse for Notebooks

2.Microsoft Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 3000- Winter Blue

3.Logitech NEW G5 Laser Mouse

4.Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer with Tilt-Wheel

5.Microsoft Intellimouse Optical Mouse

Popularity: 20% [?]

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Track Your Emails Using ReadNotify

April 30th, 2008 PC Tips

Track Your Emails Using ReadNotify

During the day I tend to work between a few PCs, so I mostly use webmail for sending and receiving my emails, Fastmail to be more precise as it is simply the best one for my purposes.
The only problem with webmail is that you cannot track any mail that you have sent, the only message you may receive, is if the e-mail address is incorrect and the email is bounced or sent back to you.
To be fair, even Outlook and Thunderbird as good as they are, have fairly basic tracking options.

It’s not that I need to track every e-mail, just the important ones, for example I may want to send an important photo to someone, or even my CV to a potential employer (you have to keep your options open :-) .) Once you send the email how do you know they have received it? Ok, so it hasn’t bounced or been sent back to you, but it would be nice to know when they opened it, if they just deleted it, and even how long they read it for.
This is where ReadNotify comes in to its own.
ReadNotify was released a number of years ago, and is constantly being improved and becoming more sophisticated overtime, it’s very easy to use and has an array of options that you can tweak.

ReadNotify can provide you with many tracking details including some of the below:

  • Date and time opened
  • Location of recipient (per their ISP city /town)
  • Map of location (available on paid subscriptions)
  • Recipients IP address
  • Apparent email address of opening (if available)
  • Referrer details (ie; if accessed via web mail etc)
  • URL clicks
  • How long the email was read for
  • How many times your email was opened
  • If your email was forwarded, or opened on a different computer

As I wrote earlier, ReadNotify has many options, which includes you to able to have the e-mail you sent self-destruct after being read once or more, PDF tracking, invisible tracking, and also the ability to track Microsoft word and Excel documents.

How do you use ReadNotify?
To get started you need to sign up for an account, don’t worry as ReadNotify will not use your personal details in any way, or send you spam mail.
ReadNotify is not free, but very inexpensive, and you get a free trial, their cheapest option is $24 (around £12) for the year which gives you 2000 e-mails to play with.
When you have signed up all you need to do is add .readnotify.com at the end of the e-mail address. So for example if you were sending an e-mail to someone, and their e-mail address is john.smith@reed.com, it would now look like john.smith@reed.com.readnotify.com.
If you don’t want to constantly type .readnotify.com, then there is a plug-in that will do it for you.
Minutes after you have sent the e-mail you will receive a tracking e-mail from ReadNotify, depending on the options you choose in your account (which you can change at any time,) will depend on the complexity of the tracking report. Click here to take a look at an example report and see just how much information you can acquire.

The report is emailed to you minutes later after you have sent your email, and you have a choice of formats, PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint or directly in the email itself.
One thing I did notice was that not all the information is always correct, for example I sent an email to my friend and the location was incorrect, other than that ReadNotify was excellent.

Click here to go to the website.

Have you used Readnotify before or something similar, then let us know?

Popularity: 16% [?]

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