Powerpoint? that's so 1995...

Powerpoint, Microsoft's flagship presentation software has paved the way for thousands of people across the world to interactively and graphically present their case for many years. Unfortunately the flagship software has sunk. It is no more intuitive than your toaster knowing that you want to make toast and it doing it without you touching it.

Now I'm not saying there is any catch-all miracle software that does fantastic at getting your presentation to look great and makes your toast too. But if you want your presentation to look like it came out of 1995 then by all means go for it! The templates are horrible and the transitions don't look so hot.

I had to plug in a PC to our projectors which are 4:3 but we overshoot, and scale the output to 16:9. Sounds simple enough, and with ProPresenter and Keynote it actually is. It's not hard to find settings to do such things. BUT powerpoint? no way jose. I had to google it in order to find out how to change the output pixel ratio, and do you know what I found? you have to "trick it" becuase who would want to use a (now standard) 16:9 device with powerpoint?! I had to go in and set the 'print output page space" to change the screen out put...REDICULOUS!

So not only does it make youre presentations look like you're way behind the times, it also makes set up for tech people a nightmare. Some how I made presenters view dissappear as well and can't get it back...oh well not my latop not my problem :)

Something else is, PC's do not come standard with a decent video card/output device so if you're pushing to a projector over a long cord, or your PC and your projector were made in different eras then you're going to have a huge compatibility issue and will either end up with lines through your screen, incorrect resolutions, a video card to weak to actually display the distance you need without a booster in line, or a sucky image.

Mac's can do it out the box...seriously. Use Keynote. Tech guys will love you forever. Oh and know what you're doing somewhat!

Audio is a whole other ball park and most mobile computers suck at doing it from the mini-port.

So if you're going to use a PC and powerpoint, design your graphics well, make sure you're ready to go for any type of display situation and don't give your tech guy grief if he has to jump through 500 hoops to get your presentation to display (and it still looks like crap, part of that is probably your fault)

keeping you tech savy