MS Power Point - DIE

[mohrr]

Originally Posted by Ryan Morehart

Microslop...

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.

I'm sorry, I thought Windows was restricted to x86. What else does it run on?

[Astronouth7303]

Originally Posted by mohrr

I'm sorry, I thought Windows was restricted to x86. What else does it run on?

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.

[Marc P.]

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!

[Chris Fultz]

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....

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

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....

Office only runs on two platforms, Wintel and Mac. It is impossible for Microsoft to support 100% of the Wintel hardware out there. However Microsoft requires looking at the computer and giving it an XP certification before a manufacture it releases it to the public.

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.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by Chris Fultz

Interesting thread.

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....

AHHH Yes! back to the days of Xacto word processing and getting high on Whiteout. Talk about a reliable system, never any crashes there, unless somebody forgot to put the cap back on... But even then it was only new work that was affected, the old stuff was always there, in the file drawer, assuming you could remember which presentation you used it in last.

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.

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by mohrr

I'm sorry, I thought Windows was restricted to x86. What else does it run on?

Itanium.

(And there are NT4 builds for Alpha.)