A variety of presentation aids can be generated by this one piece of versatile software, including 35-mm slides, overhead transparencies, audience handouts, and even slide shows produced directly from a computer. In addition, it functions well with Word and Excel, so you can import work produced by these packages into your presentation. Another useful feature is the PowerPoint viewer, which allows viewing of a presentation regardless of whether the computer program itself is on the computer. In other words, you can carry all of the software required to give your presentation and load it onto a compatible computer when you reach the site of your talk. PowerPoint holds a substantial share of the presentation-graphics market and provides solid customer support and education.
Several books are also available.
PowerPoint comes in Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Macintosh versions. I use a laptop computer hooked to a data projector to provide visual aids with my presentations whenever possible. A data projector is essentially a box that projects the video signal coming from the computer onto a screen, much as a slide projector does with slides. In fact, data projectors can replace slide projectors for most presentations. Whereas slides are unchangeable, material in a presentation using a laptop and a data projector can be revised right up to the minute of presentation.