Lab

Presentation software

Power corrupts; PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. That's the opinion of Edward Tufte, an expert on information design. Anyone who's ever had to sit through a lacklustre PC-based presentation knows where he's coming from: what should be a way to add impact and interest can end up turning even the best ideas into a yawn-inducing mush. With this in mind, we tested PowerPoint alongside its main rivals to find out which delivered the best presentations at the best price.

Presentation software is the standard medium of communication in business, education and even politics. As you talk your audience through your argument, you show a series of images, known as slides from pre-digital days. Each contains a few bullet points - brief pieces of text summarising the main ideas - and maybe a picture or chart. Between slides there's a transition effect, such as a fade, where one image grows fainter as the next replaces it. Within each slide, there may also be builds, where bullet points or graphics appear one by one.

CONTENT IS KING

'Rich media' is the buzzword for whacking more and more multimedia shenanigans into presentations. But audiences are usually more interested in rich content: good ideas presented comprehensibly. Few presenters have the time or skills to construct an immersive multimedia experience. What you need is software to help you summarise ideas in a clear, attractive format. You'll need ready-made templates that look professional and help to structure your information.

Built-in charting features are useful; if you import graphs you've made using other software, they won't match the style of your presentation, and the chart your audience can grasp at a glance onscreen should be different from what you'd prepare for a printed report.

As well as providing ready-made visual themes, most of the packages offer content templates for the types of information you might want to present, such as a strategy proposal or sales presentation. But it's not always obvious whether a template represents accepted best practice or someone's suggestions, and there's a predictable US-centric bias in approach and language.

STAND AND DELIVER

Delivering your presentation needs as much thought as creating it. The easiest way to present is on your own laptop, since all your software is there and you know it's going to work. In many meeting rooms and auditoria, you can hook up your laptop to a projector.

It's trickier if you use an in-house computer, as you must make sure it has compatible software. What they have is usually PowerPoint, so you'll have to supply your presentation as a PowerPoint (*.ppt) file. Although most other programs can save to .ppt format, there are bound to be glitches, so you'll need to check your finished file, ideally in PowerPoint. Re-opening the .ppt in the same program will at least reveal some omissions.

To send a presentation for people to see themselves, you need to export it to a standard format or include a player program. PowerPoint lets you bundle files with Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer. You can use this program to play .ppt files from other presentation packages. WordPerfect Presentations and Lotus Freelance Graphics have their own distributable players. Some packages export to Flash, which most users can play in a web browser, but certain transitions and animations may not be supported. Others can save a presentation as a movie file, which limits interactive features.