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MS Power Point - DIE
argh... I had our PPP all ready to go, looked wonderful, we'd practiced a dozen times. Then we get there, set up, and PP crashes 3 TIMES!!!! So we ended up having to give our presentation totally by memory and stuff. We covered all the bases and whatnot, but man, now I REALLY DISLIKE Power Point. :mad:
Anyone else have presentation/interview horror stories? |
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That's why I use Keynote on OSX. :)
So far, not a single problem. Great fun. We didn't get a chance to create a keynote for our Chairmans award, but we will next year. |
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Microslop... :eek:
I used to have a quote on my signature that said "I'm not anti-Microsoft, I'm just pro-quality." You have to credit to Microsoft, however. They do have to have an operating system that runs on a huge variety of hardware all over the world. :) |
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It's late now but there are places on line, that will trun your power point presentation into 35mm slides, not cheap, but handy as a backup. If you can get it done early like a week before the cost goes down.
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our team used keynote both this year and the last for our presentation. It's such an awesome program and it's much better than powerpoint- it's so smooth and easy to use! Just out of curiosity, what have other teams who do powerpoint presentations do to show their presentation? A laptop, or a desktop pc? We're debating whether or not to step it up and bring in our iMac that we use for our pit display at nationals.
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Yep, two years ago the format was completely different (10 minute video)... I myself, a few other kids, and our TV lab teacher busted our butts throughout 6 weeks making this video.. We make this pretty box and send the DVD in. So when our presenters go to present the judges listen for five minutes or so, then one stops our presenter in mid sentence and says something like this "Oh wait, you guys aren't 222... your'e..... 341?... Turns out we couldn't see your video, our computer wouldn't run it. You have a hour to get a computer that we can watch it on" So we run around like headless chickens looking for a computer (non-mac). After nearly a hour we realize our pitmates 357 have a compaq, and we rush to the judges. They can't hear anything in the loud situation, so we go downstairs to the locker room (at Drexel's gym) and from what i've heard there was a bodybuilder in there listening to some loud music. So we ask him politely to turn it down for 10 minutes, and he refuses. The judges watch our video in a smelly, loud weight room. Fortunately, it went much better the next 2 years, as WE brought our own computer. Lessons learned :P |
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Guys...ppt isnt that bad once you know how to tame it...if you have any questions, send them my way, it's required at Babson to have MS office proficiency.
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<rant>
OK... How do you make the computer not crash on you when you are presenting the CA PPT? Background: It was on my computer that our CA PPT crashed and I have done easily 70-80 PowerPoint Presentations in the last 4 years. This is the first time PPT has crashed on my laptop. What do I do differently. Why Oh Why? Why does PowerPoint crash on one of the most important Presentations that the computer has ever done? Oh well... It's done now... and there is not much I/we can do about it </rant> |
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Peciv-
Within Power point, there is an option that will turn all slides into .jpgs, sequentally numbered. Simply save them into a folder, and should power point fail, you can open the first slide in microsofts picture viewer (or whatever you like) and view it as a slide. When you want to advance to the next slide, it should pop right over to the next one in your presentation. Basicly, exactly what powerpoint does when you view a show. You loose things like sound, video and hyperlinks, but those rarely show up anyways. If you have slides set to automagicly advance, you need someone ready to hit that space button, but a small price to pay. It's a good back up, at the least. It also becomes much easier to review a slide with out waiting for Power Point to open up. Also almost mandatory if you want to put the presentation on a website, or email just one part of a large show. -Andy A. |
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In our CADlab, where we do all of our animation, there is a sign posted that says "Just remember, it's a Microsoft product."
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Andy A.
Thank you. Great Advice! |
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Each item on the slide is a main topic and you elaborate on them. Anyway, I had a Calc professor at Drexel that taught from PPT slides, animation, sounds, and everything. He is/was the worst teacher I have ever had. He spent more time putting together the PPT than knowing and explaining the material. |
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I have had difficulties with MS Powerpoint in the past,with the PC version, in the following areas.
* I can't embeded .swf files (Even .mov are a pain sometimes) * Can't directly embed a QTVR * I can't change the opague for any of the images * It sometimes crashes when I link it to an external file However the mac version can let me do these things |
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Think of motherboards, specific processors, video cards, audio cards, modems, monitors, printers, and every other peripheral, addin card, or hardware made for the IBM-compatible PC. |
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and common, my cat could use it. it's made for 5 year olds... :rolleyes: |
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Five-year-olds? Gee, I didn't start using it until I was in fifth grade! (And I was in AGP!)
Then again, when the computers we had in kindergarten were Apple IIs...(shrug) I'm on OpenOffice here, but I'm also open for hints and tips and whatnot. |
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(And there are NT4 builds for Alpha.) |
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Yes, and therein lie most of the fundamental problems with Windows in general! Windows is designed for too much hardware! While it is getting better about built in and compatible (whql certified drivers) drivers, it's the biggest reason for much of the instability/driver conflicts is it's broad range of untested hardware support. While it's great for compatibility (windows can run in one form or another on any ia32 compatible platform), it also gets pretty bloated with a database of hundreds/thousands of drivers, when the computer it's running on will only use a handful. In my opinion, that's one thing Apple does right- they restrict the hardware their system works on so they can ensure 100% out of the box compatibility, with no hardware conflicts, and no unnecessary drivers. They can test every configuration of every machine they ship out, and with a limited set of hardware, can put more time into quality of drivers and software rather than quantity of compatible hardware. But that's all off-topic for this thread. For any critical presentation done via computer, whether it be power point, playing back a video, playing back some audio, recording something, etc, it's always a good idea to close all non-essential programs and background processes before running it. I've been to a number of theatrical productions where a large screen and projector are used in the background to set the mood or tone, or play a relevant video clip. About halfway through the show, the computer barfed up a blue screen, on the projector. It didn't take them long to shut the projector off, but I saw the module the fatal exception was caused in, and it was a non-critical application left open in the background. Before you do any presentation, right click and close any system tray icons (in the corner next to the clock), and disable anti-virus protection (you never know when you'll get one of those handy "your virus definitions need updating" messages). Also, on Windows 9x/98/ME, hit control, alt, delete, and click "end task" on everything except Explorer and Systray. In Windows 2000/XP, hit control, alt, delete, click Task Manager (2000/XP Pro) then the Processes tab, and hit "end process" on anything that you recognize, but know you're not using (e.g. aim, msnmsg (msn messenger), etc. I'd post a list of what should be left running, but I'm in Linux at the moment.. if anyone else can, please do). This way, you end all potential sources of problems during your presentation, as well as free up memory and resources so things run a bit quicker and smoother. Generally speaking, the bigger the presentation, and more more content you add (pictures, sound files, animations, etc), the bigger the file and memory footprint will get, and the more resources it will take to run. If for whatever reason, power point runs out of memory, or starts fighting for memory with another process, you'll get a crash. Like Jess said before, Power point can be tamed, it just takes a little elbow grease and a few "love taps" with a hammer to get it to do what you wish. As a side note, I've played around a bit with OpenOffice Impress, and it seems to just as good, if not better than Power point (and is still compatible with the majority of power point presentations out there). But it's stability is dependent on the rest of the system, just like power point. Better to end problems before they begin, especially for critical presentations! |
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Interesting thread.
MS office is designed to operate on a huge number of platforms. Since Microsoft does not make hardware, it is up to the System packager (Dell, Gatewy, HP, etc.) to make sure there is compatibility. Some packagers are better than others. It would be nearly impossible for Microsoft to verify that their software works on every possible combination of Dell hardware alone, even more when you multiply that by the number of packagers - Mac has an advantage because they make both parts - the HW and SW. That helps with operational issues, but also drives up the cost to you, because there are no Dell-Macs or HP-Macs or anyone-else-Macs. Despite the problems you name, Office works incredibly well in a business environment and is good because companies can share documents and presentations via. email and e-commerce packages and everyone can see the same message. I am obviously in the minority in this post, but my views are based on the benefits MS Office (and specifically powerpoint) brings to the workplace. I am old enough that I was working when secretaries still typed everything on a typewriter, bosses had answering machines, a FAX was a new and novel thing, and presentations were typed words on transparency sheets. We have come a long way in a short time.... |
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However I still think PowerPoint still has room for improvement, especially in the media area. Also, even though Apple makes both the hardware and the software, they still have to support a multitude of configurations. I believe that Apple had made OS X robust enough to make it so. |
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Then there was "sneaker net" where you did your stuff on a computer but had to put it on a floppy (which really was floppy, I still have a couple of 5 1/4" disks around for nostalgia purposes) to carry it over to a machine that had a printer hooked up. Seriously, Chris is right. In the business environment the Office suite is just about essential. There are other applications out there. But it is really convenient to be able to send a copy of a presentation or other document to my Air Force customer and not have to worry about translation issues. Way back when, in the early days of PCs, it was a real pain when your customer asked for a copy of something and they used Word, while you used WordPerfect or something similar. Then you had to negotiate about what format you were going to send stuff in. As if the other negotiations about trivial things like the price of the contract weren't bad enough. |
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It runs faster on my VERY old system than Microsoft Office does. I do give MS credit though, they have changed how a lot business is conducted in a lot of ways, and for the better. |
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If I remember right, you can use Open Office (www.openoffice.org) and use their Power Point software to make a slide show you can save it as a power point file or their file format, and I think you can even make it into a Flash file. If you save it as flash then you don't need power point and you can run it from any computer! Just a thought.
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You made me look :) so here it is:
http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html "Of course, you are free to use your old Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, or save your work in PowerPoint format for sending to people who are still locked into Microsoft products. Alternatively, use IMPRESS's built-in ability to create Flash (.swf) versions of your presentations. " |
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If Power Point is killing you why not try Windows Movie Maker?
I use ppt to make easily laid out stickers for our robot because I can print the screen and play with the word art and such But Movie Maker is much easier to work with because you set up an archive of art and pix you want and just drag and drop them into a timeline. You can also easily add a soundtrack and all kinds of transitions and special effects. It is far less wieldy than ppt. If you have windows xp and office 2000 you no doubt have it in your program list (check accessories). To a guy who remembers the discovery of color television and the microwave oven this program is pretty impressive. Of course if microsoft products are not good enough for you, you won't listen anyway.... ; ) WC :cool: |
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Imho PPT has gotten to the point of being tacky and cliche. The transition effects, clipart, wordart, and sounds especially are plain TACKY! I feel most powerpoint presentations are rather distasteful. Microsoft needs to do some SERIOUS overhauling of the entire MS Office suite of products. They just havn't kept up with the times and arn't very flexible.
My main gripes: Code bloated and ssslloowww... buggy (esp excel) Interface bloated. Too many useless features cluttering things up. Equation editor sucks Thinks its smarter than i am and tries to do too much for me. Confuses itself real easily. If i want to make a list i will make a list. I don't care when it thinks i should make a list!!!!!! AI is not a good idea for a word processor!!! No concept of alpha blending, anti aliasing, shadows etc. The price is utterly ridiculous. Graph and chart capabilities are PATHETIC |
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i ususally get off pretty easy by making autosave store my files frequently on v.X of PP (i have OSX on my eMac). i'm starting to use keynote more and more just because i get free updates on it ...and it's mac friendly ;)
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<Random Aside>
It is interesting to see how far this thread has swayed from the original couple of posts... </> |
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