Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    I have "Typing Tutor" itself - I forget the developer. I believe it to
    be a port from the C64.  It is not a very good port - not Amiga'ized.
    My impression is that this is one of the very early efforts for the
    Amiga.  The version I have will only work with KickStart 1.1, so I
    haven't been able to use it since I upgraded to a A2000.  I was never
    able to get a fixed version, but think it is now available. Not too bad
    at teaching typing, although it gets tiresome after awhile. 

    I am interested in hearing reviews of other programs too.  I still have
    people here at home who need one. For awhile there was a tradein offer
    from EA on their new one.  It sounds good from what little I have
    heard, but I am leery of them and their copy protection schemes. 

	Paul

    The award winning tutor "Sylvia Porter [I think its' called]" has
    been ported to the amiga.  Saw it a couple of months ago at the
    Software Shop [Now located in the Midtown mall in Worcester].
    

    Has the Software Shop moved out of there old location on pleasant
    street?
    
    
    

    Re: .3
    
    Yes...  They have more than doubled their space.  The business hasn't
    changed.  New Ads to appear.  The new location is only a block from
    the old one.  Between the Newsroom and arcade across from city hall.
    Go down a flight of stairs (or escalator).

    Sorry... The typing Tutor I meant to say is Mavis Bacon. 
    

    
    	Wanted to Buy:
    
    	Mavis Bacon typing tutor program.
    
        Dean

    Any comments from typing tutor users...anybody out there seen Mavis
    and how it compares to Intellitype? A shop demo is never the same
    as using the thing for a 30 day teaching session. My need is to
    get my 11 and 14 year olds typing OK, to get me (age 47 and a fairly
    fast two and a half finger typist) and my wife (age set unseen,
    fairly good speed typist) all up to a good standard.
    Is Mavis and/or Intellitype suitable for all the above? Or is there
    something better I haven't heard about yet? (In Australia)
    	Answers before 30th Nov please...  ;-)
    					Regards...........Guy

   yeah I've got MB typing tutor - really quite good - but a bit pricy!
    cost me $130 New Zealand (as a present for my wife)
    
    thats about $80 US...
    
    havent seen Intellitype...

    would be reasonably suitable for young folk - has a formula I racer game
    faster and more accurately you type - faster the racer goes. 

    they might require a little help with some of the functions, but
    I doubt it! has full stastical results displayed in graphical format
    etc
    
    On a whole - yep - its suitable for all of the above - but collect
    opinions from others prior to purchase...
    
    FOOTNOTE: MB won some award in the US in 1987 for being the most
              user-friendly and informative beast in the education
              category of this award (dont know who they were in
              competition with however)
        

    hope this helps
    
    Phil
    
    

    as you can probably tell from the previous reply - I haven't used
    the package too much 
    
    
    Phil
    (still the fastest 2-finger typist in the south - nearly!)

I have Intellitype, but haven't used it much, it's a few weeks old.

It's released by Electronic Arts. It runs from workbench icon okay,
but I haven't figured out how to start it from CLI. The manual says
it is "not configured for hard disk", but the diskette can be copied.
It wants a separate diskette for your progress tracking, yet another
nuisance. Probably there are workarounds for all this, I just haven't
gotten to them yet.

I tried a few of the tests and exercises, which were mildly interesting.
It does do a very thorough analysis of your speeds and errors, by key
and by type of mistake. (Like transposition errors, "baot", double-
strike errors, "bbok", etc.) If you take the introductory test, it
will evaluate your current level, and start a lesson plan at that level.
I'm a little suspicious, because it says I'm typing 30 w.p.m., and I
don't think I'm anything like that fast.

If I start using over the holidays, or manage to make it store and run
in a friendlier way (i.e., from my point of view- from hard disk, from CLI)
I'll update this.

John O.

    Re: Mavis Beacon

    This may be comparing apples and oranges, but I've got Mavis for my
    C=128 & was wondering if the Amiga version suffers from the same problem.
    All in all its very good, but it appears that you can't repeat a 
    lesson. If you request "No, do something else" from the menu, it only
    moves forward in the lesson tree. The only way I have been able to
    repeat a lesson is to either switch the keyboard from qwerty to dvorak
    and back again & start back at lesson 1, or to delete my profile from
    the data disk. Does the Amiga version have similar problems?

    Except for this I'd rate it pretty highly, though as mentioned in the
    previous note about Intellitype M.B. also rates me at 30 wpm, which I 
    kinda doubt.
							-Dom

    Having been a two finger typist of some note for many years I decided
    to take the plunge and bought Mavis B. Never did much with it for
    months but got serious a few weeks back. I was making great progress
    until........
    
    
    Mavis died on me.  I got through the initial diagnosis bit and into the
    serious(?) typing tutorial.
    
    I am at a stage where she says "Let's go to the workshop....." At this 
    point the system hangs. I can still move the mouse pointer and call up 
    the menus (although I cant invoke anything.) Only option is to reboot.
    
    The disk looks OK in that I can copy all files -(no checksum probs). It
    appears that the main program (MAVIS) has a bug in it, or it got
    corrupted when they wrote to the disk (with a good checksum). Has
    anybody else out there encountered this phenomenon?
    
    Glenn

Mavis is a nice program except that (in my experience) it tends to self
destruct every so often.  I think this is a result of its copy protection
combined with its desire to write to the program disk.

I run from a copy.  Whenever this happens, I copy the log files for safe
keeping, make a fresh copy of Mavis, and restore the log files so it still
knows the status of the various students.

I don't know if all versions have this problem - mine was defective from
the start.  (Had two copies of the the main program on the disk and was
totally out of space.)  I just patched it up rather than returning it.

	Paul