Playing and Displaying Your PowerPoint Presentation

Probably the most widely used presentation tool is Microsoft PowerPoint. Mobile professionals use it on their desktop PC to create slides, and then on their laptop connected to a LCD projector to display the slides during presentations. Handheld PCs have had a "Pocket" version of PowerPoint built in since the introduction of Windows CE 2.0 devices in early 1998. But the application has been conspicuously missing from the Palm-size and Pocket PC devices. However, that's changed with the recent release of a number of presentation programs for the Pocket PC. Now it is possible to create the slides and show the presentation on your Pocket PC.

iPresentation Player and Mobile Converter

One such solution is the iPresentation Player and Mobile Converter, both available as a free download from Presenter, Inc. (www.presenter.com). Presenter markets the iPresentation Suite and a number of other "knowledge delivery solutions" to businesses, helping them author and manage PowerPoint presentations. These free downloads provide a player to install on the Pocket PC and a converter to translate PowerPoint slides from the desktop PowerPoint format to iPresentation Player format. Also included with the free download is a sample presentation including voice narration and video. There are three other sample presentations with voice and video available on their Web site, featuring Microsoft's Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Transmeta Corporation's David Ditzel. The ability to add voice narration and video is not available with the free download.

To test Presenter's software, I first installed the iPresentation Player on my Casio E-125 Pocket PC.

The installation process automatically added the converter to ActiveSync. Then I created a simple slide show using my desktop PC version of MS PowerPoint. These slides included images from my Casio QV2800 digital camera. I used ActiveSync to send the slide show to my Casio E-125 Pocket PC. This automatically converted it to iPresentation format. The translation and transfer process worked without a hitch. Finally, I opened iPresentation Player on my Pocket PC and selected the presentation from the file menu. The main Slide View popped up (see Screen 1)

 There are four slide views available:

The Table of Contents View displays a list of the slides in the presentation.

The Slide View (see Screen 1).

Screen 1:. iPresentation Player's Slide View. The top 1/3 of the screen displays a video or still image of the speaker. The bottom 2/3 of the screen displays the actual slide.

The Thumbnail View displays small images of all slides (12 to a page).

The Full Screen View displays the slide only, in landscape mode (see Screen 2).

Screen 2: iPresentation Player's Full Screen View displays the slide in landscape mode.

 The iPresentation Player does not support the following PowerPoint features: speaker's notes, slide animations, builds and transitions, sounds, and embedded OLE objects. Presenter says that these features may be included in future releases.

Presenter's complete iPresentation Suite 3.0, marketed to large businesses, lets the user add video and voice narration to the PowerPoint presentations. This ability is not available with the free iPresentation Player and Mobile Converter. However, the free player and converter work great for the individual who wants to create and play basic PowerPoint presentations on his Pocket PC.