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Alternative Presentation Systems

April 7th, 2007 by chris 3 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Are there any good alternative presentation systems out there that can really replace Powerpoint? Keynote, sure, but I’m on a PC. S5 is a good idea, and works ok but it doesn’t handle resolution changes very well– nothing more annoying than setting up with the projector and having your cool picture only cut in half. Opera Show is interesting but you (and more important those viewing the presentation later) must have Opera and, well, not that many people do. Using OpenOffice Impress feels like replacing one irritating presentation product with another just like it.

For now I’m sticking with S5 plugged into PmWiki, but it’s not scratching the itch. I guess I could go back to LaTeX + Prosper, but that’s an awful lot of installing and tweaking for just this one task (considering I try to resist presentations requiring slides). Is there any movement in this space or are people just resigned to Powerpoint and Keynote forever?

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3 Responses to “Alternative Presentation Systems”

  1. Nate Says:
    April 8th, 2007 at 8:35 am

    Normally, I just use web pages. Only time I don’t is when I have to collaborate with somebody else and they want to use PPT/Impress

    Using Kompozer, create a template with style sheet. First one takes some time, but after that, you can slam out “slides” as fast there as with anything else and the advantage is that when you want to put them online, just upload the directory and provide a link .

    NL

  2. Matthom Says:
    April 8th, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    Is there any movement in this space or are people just resigned to Powerpoint and Keynote forever?

    There is movement – but as you know, like every other desktop app – it’s all getting moved to the web. Knowing that, I’d have to agree with Nate.

    Have you tried SlideShare.net? You can upload in many different formats, and play the presentation in full screen in your browser. If you use Firefox, hitting F11 makes the browser full-screen, making the presentation look more like it’s local.

    Just my 2 cents.

  3. chris Says:
    April 9th, 2007 at 9:02 am

    Yeah, I’ve started using SlideShare and it is pretty good, though I got some horrible skewing when using it on a 50″ plasma display recently where PPT degraded a bit more gracefully.

    I will probably go back to LaTeX and PDF… just because ppt annoys me so.