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Unread 04-08-2004, 21:14
Marc P. Marc P. is offline
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Re: MS Power Point - DIE

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astronouth7303
x86 is a processor spec. But that's only a fraction of the picture.

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.

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!