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Summary: Even though Microsoft’s PowerPoint presentation software controls the majority of the market, there are other products to consider.

Just like most areas where Microsoft competes, they dominate in presentation software with 90% of the market, so competition is fragmented. Below I’ve listed some of the better known product alternatives and an enhancement to PowerPoint. Please keep in mind that poor presentation skills won’t be remedied with different presentation software tools (see my other posts on using PowerPoint).

1. Ovation by Adobe is a $99 enhancement to PowerPoint. I tried this product and found that it can provide some animation beyond what is available in PowerPoint. The real standout feature is the ability to include moving backgrounds. For the most part it doesn’t really provide animation that is significantly sexier than what is possible with PowerPoint. At $99 the investment is not that substantial however.
2. Google has just rolled out a competitor to PowerPoint called Google Presentation. This is available for free and if you know Google you know that they will limit features to achieve ease of operation and that is exactly what they have done here (i.e., no sound, video or animation capabilities). This is a very easy tool to use with the strongest feature being the ease in which you can share and store presentations on the Internet. Google is not really trying to play nice with Microsoft when it comes to this product; you can import PowerPoint presentations but you can’t export from Google Presentation in PowerPoint format. This will become a problem if you need to share presentations and the recipient isn’t in the Google fold. This one is worth trying because it’s free and you’ll never have to worry about upgrading software again because it’s all online.
3. If you have an Apple computer you know that they make a competitor to PowerPoint called Keynote. This product is only $79 and has Apple’s customary outstanding graphic capabilities. There are features on Keynote that will probably show up on PowerPoint someday. The only big negative is that the audience for this product is limited to those with Apple computers.

4. If you hate Microsoft, love PowerPoint and don’t want to spend any money, then you need to go to openoffice.org and download their free competitor to PowerPoint that has essentially the same look and feel of the older versions of PowerPoint. This product is an Open Source project that is contributed to by Sun and a host of volunteer coders.

You can opt for different presentation software, but at the end of the day please remember that it is the presenter that will have the greatest impact on any presentation, regardless of the software used.

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Tags: PowerPoint

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