Labs

Unlike other presentation programs here, you can also use Opus to produce interactive questionnaires, multimedia shows and training applications. It comes in numerous versions; we tested Opus Presenter, which has all the features relevant to business users.

Opus doesn't support PowerPoint files, but your show can be created as a standalone presentation, a Flash file or a movie, and in each case will run on most PCs without needing any special software. Having chosen a template

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from a small but varied selection, you can plan your presentation using the QuickBuild Brainstorm Editor, where you jot down ideas, then drag them on to an outline listing of your slides. Opus then offers to add Welcome, Title and Exit pages.

It's refreshing to see some real thought has gone into the process of creating a presentation. But the developers haven't done their own ideas justice. Opus's blurb uses phrases such as "slick presentation", "professional look", "fresh" and "exciting". Little of the content lives up to these adjectives. The program harks back to the earlier days of Windows and ran sluggishly on our test PC, which was fine with the other applications. Even saving a file was initially bewildering. There are lots of advanced animation and interactive functions, but standard features such as charts are missing.

Opus is a welcome alternative to the PowerPoint crowd, and specialist users with design skills may find it invaluable. But it isn't likely to produce a professional-looking result with a reasonable input of time and effort