Comments on: What’s Better Than Microsoft PowerPoint?

By: Antony

Antony — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 07:26:20 +0000

I have PowerPoint on my Windows computer and keynote on my mac :)

By: bradleybradwell

bradleybradwell — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:40:40 +0000

I remember a while ago that you talked about another alternative to Powerpoint…. I believe it was called 360 slide or something like that. I thought that was a fantastic alternative to other presentation software that’s available.

By: Derek K. Miller

Derek K. Miller — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:32:47 +0000

You might find my rants at penmachine.com/powerpoint informative. My general message is that a presentation should work without any slides, and that any visual accompaniment should be (a) a bonus, and (b) not duplicate what you're saying. The worst thing to do is have a bunch of bullet points on screen and read them. The software you use is largely irrelevant to that.

By: Will Farris

Will Farris — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:34:25 +0000

Well, it really all depends on the context of how PowerPoint is being used. For lightweight use, pictures and such are fine and the speaker should basically just ad lib. But if I am teaching a class on configuring security parameters on a firewall, then the details MUST be shown up there and I MUST go over them verbatim and then some because of the importance of being exact and complete for it to be of value to the watchers in the crowd. For that PowerPoint is perfectly suited. What may be boring is the material itself (sometimes), or the presenter himself (usually). For that, PP can’t overcome, nor can any other presentation package.

By: E. Douglas Jensen

E. Douglas Jensen — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:45:12 +0000

This claim that a good PowerPoint presentation should be all words is made by people who don’t give much in the way of highly technical presentations. Put your PowerPoint where your mouth is and show us a presentation of of a proof of a non-trivial mathematical theorem, or a presentation of a non-trivial C++ program.