This review turned out to be much more involved than other reviews. Usually I knew what I was reviewing. Who cant judge data backup software, or how well a razor works. They do not require much research, just testing. Speed Reading however was out of my normal area of experience. I had not even heard of speed reading before. The first thing I did was go to my library and found a book by Evelyn Wood on speed reading. I picked up the basics and the history from it. My web research also indicated that speed reading may be beneficial to children with ADD and Dyslexia however those points were not tested in this review.

It is well beyond the scope of this review to determine if speed reading works or which program is the best from an educational standpoint. However, I can see the logic in speed reading and I have setup some criteria that allows the training software to be compared on a level playing field.

If you want to learn Speed Reading then the software is the way to go. I tried a book from the library first and immediately found it a major pain to time myself while reading. Why not let the computer do the work? It’s easy to set up on your computer, covers several teaching methods and is simple for anyone to use—novice to experienced readers, even children.

The result of our testing was two clear leaders and the rest lagged far behind. Some were of questionable value and some provided flat out bad information. For the Help/Support rating, I emailed each of the companies asking a simple question about the software. The result was based on whether or not they responded within 48 hours and if they answered the question when they did respond.