Alternatives To Powerpoint

The ability to create presentations with a computer is a fundamental skill for many people: students, employees in large and small businesses, company directors and NGO workers. Creating presentations is useful and necessary in those cases where new ideas have to be shared or historical financial statements and results of new products or researches have to be presented. However, despite the centrality of such skills, many of those who should have mastered such means do not know the alternatives to the most common software.

There are indeed alternatives to the most used software like PowerPoint for Windows and Mac and Keynote for Mac, which could be too greedy in terms of system requirements. In addition, pre-made templates, though certainly time-saving, may not enable the user to fully express his creativity or to focus the layout of the presentation around the idea that they want to express.

Everyone knows that in today's world, especially with regard to the presentation world, aesthetics and design themselves are as important as the idea to be expressed. Failing to efficiently do so could compromise the effectiveness of the whole process.

Another problem facing those who have to produce presentation frequently is the necessity to share such presentations with other users. The most commonly used formats (PowerPoint and Keynote) are proprietary formats. Such formats involve the compulsory use of expensive software (usually costing up to 300$) and the free alternatives are not always able to offer the same functionality. For these reasons, the new software on one hand focus on the efficient use of resources, often using new technologies as cloud computing - which is necessary when a growing portion of users use net-books and low-performance machines – and on the other hand focus on the complete customization of interfaces and results.

In addition, cloud computing, or even those solutions using Flash, have the advantage of being cross-platform compatible. Among the latest is worth to name a few: SlideRocket is based on a web platform and helps create presentations in Flash (therefore readable by every operating system) that can be easily shared on the web, this feature is absent in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Prezi.com offers similar features, with the advantage of generating presentations in different formats and so they do not force the viewer to use Flash technology. The designs created by this site are shared with other users even while being created, for those who need to work in cooperation on the project.

Even giants like Google offer solutions for presentations - Google Docs offers online software for creating presentations and sharing them using a Google account.

By: Daniel Blinman

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Daniel Blinman is writing on behalf of Computer Training Solutions, who offer excel training and excel courses