I need the best presentation software for X. I *loathe* powerpoint, but may have to use it as we are PC based at work and that is what we have on the machines. However, I think I can get away by taking my iBook to work and doing it from that. I do have PP from Office X.

I used Keynote when it was first released and didn't like it very much. I'm assuming it has improved, but I don't want to buy iWork to find out. Is there a 3rd party app that may be better (free or cheap would help). Again, OS X but I'll use a PC app if I have to.

tx

Go back to Keynote. It's top-notch.

If you need to run on PC, the safe bet has been to forget Mac, even PPT. There are things like fonts and transitions that just don't carry over well when trying to play the presentation on PCs, unless it is the most generic production. I do some company critical presentations and only bother with PPT on PC. Less headaches when suites present.

Can't speak to latest generation of Mac presentation software but I would test first if you intend to run on PC. Maybe someone here can speak to running latest Mac generated presentations on PCs?

Of course, if you present on Mac, Keynote is cool.

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JoeM

You can get a 30-day trial of iWork '06 for free - comes with new macs, I'd imagine you can get it otherplaces as well, possibly even download from Apple.com directly.

It's definitely worth it. It's not necessarily that you'll make the most amazing presentations right off the bat, it still takes some time to familiarize yourself with it's advanced capabilities and UI, but it's far superior to PP.

~A

Yet another vote for Keynote. Try it again (free 30-day demo).

I say this with great sincerity -- it's the best presentation software (in terms of how good your end product looks, which is what counts) on any platform by a HUGE margin IMHO.

It's a little confusing to work with at first, because it doesn't work like PP and because it uses Apple's built-in system tools, which still need some polish. But stick with it beyond a couple of hours and I guarantee you WILL NOT get better results with any other product.

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chas_m




[crawlingfromtheusa.blogspot.com] <-- Moving to Canada blog

cool. thanks for the responses.

btw, yes, I can do it on a mac, as long as I schlep the iBook into work and find my vid connector for the LCD projector



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2006 06:37PM by mrbigstuff.

Use Keynote, then export to an interactive quicktime movie. As long as the PC has QT installed it will run beautifully.

I even made medium quality CD movies that autoran right off the CD when inserted into any pc with QT. The quality was still better than Power Point.

Quote
mrbigstuff
I need the best presentation software for X

Keynote is the best.

Quote
mrbigstuff
Is there a 3rd party app that may be better (free or cheap would help).

No. There is none better.
But there is a free one. The presentation aspect of OpenOffice (or NeoOffice/J) is a PowerPoint work-alike.

ANother vote for Keynote.

I do the same thing as chas_m, convert it to a quicktime movie and runn it on a PC if you have to.