Is PowerPoint still the preferred presentation software?

In the past years an umber of tools have emerged to challenge PowerPoint as the definitive tool for creating presentations. Adobe's Flash, erain's Standout, OpenOffice, as well as Wildform's Wild Presenter Pro. But can any of these applications ever seriously compete against Microsoft PowerPoint?

In all honesty, I don't think so. I don't think they even come close.

As a presenter we've really only got 3 choices.

  1. To speak without a presentation and talk directly to the audience.
  2. To use visual aids, movies clips, or other 'props' to help illustrate our point.
  3. To use PowerPoint and presentation slides to illustrate our message and arguments.

The rise in new presentation tools, and revisions to old ones to try to tempt us as presenters to jump ship and use alternative softwares seems to me not only a waste of resources and energy, but extremely naive.

We all use Microsoft Office products. We're all used to Microsoft Office products, heck most of the presenters around today either grew up with an overhead projector and then switched to PowerPoint, or have no idea what an overhead projector is because they've only ever used PowerPoint.

So how can a software manufacturer believe that it's possible to make us change what comes naturally? Surely they'd be better off trying to convince me to become a muslim? Or trying to convince me that weapons of mass destruction really do exist in Iraq?

In a world where economies seem to be booming do investors and developers really just have too much money that they've lost their common sense?


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