PowerPoint Presentation Software Review

It’s no wonder why PowerPoint has become synonymous with presentation software. One of the pioneers, PowerPoint has become the standard from where all presentation software are constantly measured against. PowerPoint is powerful presentation software tool that enables users to create professional presentations by combining powerful editing features and thousands of preconfigured themes.  

Features

Cloud and Sharing – with most presentation software moving their services to the cloud and giving users the option of saving these files in a cloud drive, PowerPoint’s SkyDrive lets you store work at your virtual drive and gives you access to these files anywhere, anytime from any device.

Collaboration - SkyDrive integration now makes it possible for you to create separate accounts, one for personal and another for work. You could create an account where you could share your work with co-presenters. PowerPoint allows multiple users to work on a single presentation and even allows feedback or chat functions in real-time.

Images and media uploads – PowerPoint now allows you to upload new media from more sources. Rather than restricting you to available media in your local drives, users can now use media from Facebook and YouTube. This saves you the trouble of having to download media on your local drive before being used.

New Welcome Screen – PowerPoint’s welcome screen now reflects similar welcome screens in its Microsoft Office Suite. The welcome screen has certainly become more useful giving you a selection of general layouts or the option to create a new template.

Multi-screen views - gives presenters the ability to view previous, current and next slides. You could also swap screens with the audience but we see no logic in showing the audience your work board.   

Editing Features – PowerPoint has revamped and improved some of its editing features. Its shape creation tool allows you to combine or forge new shapes. This makes object creation limitless. Another interesting feature is the eye dropper tool. It enables you to grab any color and apply it to your background and other image elements.

Play From and Motion Path End – better and easier animation control

Present Online – PowerPoint now lets you “broadcast” presentations online. This gives your audience to navigate freely through your presentation at their own pace.

Compatibility

With PowerPoint leading the way in terms of presentation software users, the issue of compatibility with other presentation software rests in the shoulders of its competitors. Most if not all presentation software has even strongly advertised its ability to import and edit PowerPoint presentations and vice versa. 

Ease of Use

Previous and current users of Microsoft Office Suite will have no problems working out the different controls and features in PowerPoint. There are certainly noticeable changes which made navigation even simpler. The startup screen is more functional again a reflection of Microsoft Office 2013 layout. Controls felt less cluttered and touch-friendly especially for those using PowerPoint in their mobile device.

Summary – PowerPoint Presentation Software

One of the biggest changes we were happy to see with PowerPoint’s latest incarnation was SkyDrive integration. This gives you easy access to all your files in any device. It also allows you to share files with co-workers making it possible to work and share updates in real-time. Better control layout makes for easier navigation. Importing media into your presentation is less cumbersome. Having the ability to directly import photos from online sources for example saves you valuable time that could be spent researching or improving your presentation. PowerPoint 2013 tries to stay ahead of the competition by building on its previous strengths while introducing new features such as SkyDrive integration which we think is a step in the right direction.