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If you work a lot on computers , then chances are that 80% of the time you are using the keyboard to type letters , documents , emails , blog posts etc . So if you add up the time spent in a day typing stuff and then if you increase your typing speed even by a few words per minute , you will find that it makes a huge difference to that time spent and makes you much more productive . Moreover , typing fast has the following advantages :

1: Reply to emails quickly : Yes , if you have a very good typing speed and get a lot of emails everyday , it won’t seem like a burden if you can do fast touch typing and can reply emails much faster .

2: Leave Comments : If you have been avoiding commenting on your favorite blogs, just because it eats up your time in typing , then now is the time to learn touch-typing and be an active commentator on blogs .

3: Responding to IMs : Yes, you might be getting a lot of chat windows popping up and if you have the habit of typing fast then you can easily type replies and quickly respond .

4: Using Keyboard Shortcuts Effectively : Only if you can touch type well , the keyboard shortcuts , available in Windows and other online applications can prove beneficial . In fact you will save a great deal of time because you will use the mouse less frequently .

Hence touch typing or rather fast touch typing is worth learning and here are some of the free tools which can help you achieve that .

Excellent And Free Typing Tools

1: Keybr.com

This is probably the simplest tool for practicing touch typing . It is browser based and available at keybr.com .The good thing about this is that it is online , so whenever you have spare time anywhere , you can just go to this site and start practicing .

2: Rapid typing Tutor

Another very good tool for improving touch typing skills and it is available as a free download for Windows at rapidtyping.com .You can customize your typing lessons and it also has some good typing games . I would also suggest you to first go through their manuals because they have explained each and every feature quite elaborately there .

3: Typefaster

Typefaster is a free Windows only application which can be downloaded and installed on your computer . A very good interface with lots of customization options , multi-user support and a 3D game , this software can be ideal for practicing touch typing .

4: Speedtest at 10-fast-fingers

After you are through with practicing touch typing using any one of the above three applications , you can take this online speed test , which is a useful one . I came across this application at Daily Bits .

So how fast can you type now ?