Behold the Power
Written: Aug 11 '00 (Updated Aug 20 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Makes you look great!
Cons: Need a computer and projector for optimal performance
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| LisaS's Full Review: Microsoft PowerPoint |
Do you want to give a polished presentation? One that will "wow" your audience? One that will convey the appropriate amount of information on each slide? Use Powerpoint because it has the tools to make you look great.
Four reasons why you should use Powerpoint:
1. This program is very easy to use
If you have no clue how to put together a presentation that's okay with Powerpoint. There are templates and wizards that guide you through the process of creating a presentation. So for first-timers you can start small and build from there. The slide templates are great because they are designed to allow an optimal amount of information on one slide. If you have used Word or most other major word processing programs the interface is intuitive and you will be inserting pictures and typing text with ease. All slides can be previewed on-screen and the order of slides can be changed by drag and drop. This program focuses on two things -- quick and easy presentation design and a professional finished product.
2. You can customize everything to suit your needs
Need to insert the company logo on every slide? No problem. Want to have a background you designed? No problem. Need to insert a picture, or show a digital movie? Add sound? Again not a problem. Anything that you have digitized that you want to present can be incorporated into Powerpoint. The text can be any color you want, the background any color, the text any size. That is the great thing about Powerpoint.
3. You can store your presentations digitally to create a personal slide library.
This is a feature that I use extensively. I store all my presentations on disk and can cut and paste slides between presentations. This saves me an immense amount of work. I can swap slides and select the information I want to present to a particular audience without going through the trouble of designing an entirely new presentation or searching to find the appropriate hard copy of a slide. With some minimal cosmetic changes you can also renovate old presentations.
Powerpoint makes you look good
If you use Powerpoint well the program can really showcase your work. Features like animated text, custom graphics and great layout make presentations look very polished. There are timing features in the program that help the pace of your talk. A person that takes the time to learn Powerpoint can use the program to make themselves look very savvy, by presenting a clear, concise message.
Three reasons why your audience wants you to use powerpoint:
1. The slides are very easy to read
A built-in feature of Powerpoint is a standard format for text that presents information in nested, bulleted lists. This makes reading the slides very easy. The font size is also set (although you can change it) to highlight this, with topic headings in large print and sub-headings in smaller print. All justifications are standardized as well so everything looks uniform between slides. Also the size of the font chosen usually allows only a set amount of information to be included on one slide so that you don't overload your audience. There is also a program included within Powerpoint to scan your slides for ease-of-view. It is almost like a spell-check and points out style mistakes as it scans through a presentation.
2. You can easily print out your presentation as handouts
Powerpoint allows you to print out your presentation slides in the order you will present them so that they can be given to the audience. There are a variety of formats that allow for multiple slides on one page, or one slide/page with room for notes etc.. This helps people concentrate on your presentation as you give it and allows for easier notetaking.
3. Powerpoint lets your audience relax and take in your information at a reasonable pace
Powerpoint allows the presenter to animate a slide and bring bullets in a list on to the screen one at a time. This prevents the urge to scan ahead in the slide. It focuses the group and makes sure that everyone is on the same page at the same time. It also allows the presenter to pause and allows for a break where the audience can easily ask questions.
I love this program and have used it to great success in a variety of settings. I have given presentations to scientific and non-scientific audiences and this program has been flexible enough to allow me to customize every talk to effectively get across my ideas. Each time I use this means of presenting information I get compliments on how well put-together I am and how easy my talk was to understand. I highly recommend this product.
There is one downfall to Powerpoint. Many of the graphics-intensive features require you to have a computer and data-projector or monitor at the site of your presentation. If you do not have this equipment you may still use Powerpoint to design your presentation, however you have to print out the slides either to a conventional slide maker or printer to make slides or overheads. I would still recommend Powerpoint to design slides and overheads because the layout features work well for these formats as well.
Good luck with all your presentations! Although I am not normally a Microsoft cheerleader I have to recommend this product. This program is the standard tool for making effective presentations not because it is made by Microsoft.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
LisaS
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Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 33 members
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