Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a straightforward presentation program designed to create dynamic slideshows for all types of audiences. PowerPoint is used at a large scale worldwide, by small organizations, such as schools and universities, as well as large companies and even branches of the government.

Microsoft PowerPoint is part of a much larger suite of applications, namely Microsoft Office. On the bright side, the presentations created with PowerPoint can be viewed for free with Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer.

Overall, PowerPoint is an interactive slideshow creation program. It allows you to generate an unlimited number of slides that you can tie together using a generous selection of transitions, animations and effects.

Aside from the text formatting / editing options specific to any other Office application, PowerPoint offers a rich collection of shapes, cliparts, text boxes, WordArt items and table drawing possibilities that you can use to enhance the slideshow’s appearance and to stress important aspects.

PowerPoint features video and photo editing capabilities, which means you no longer need an external image processor to achieve this. The application provides you with tools to customize color saturation, contrast, brightness, as well as artistic filters such as blur, watercolor and various brushes.

You can record your slideshows to video files in various resolution configurations, as well as use the ‘Rehearse Timings’ application to count presentation intervals.

What’s more, the co-authoring feature allows multiple users to work on the same document without interrupting each other. You can use this in collaboration with Office Communicator if you wish to check out the availability of those who are editing the slideshow with you.

PowerPoint is worth trying out. The extensive collection of templates, transitions, animations and effects assists users in creating presentations that are easy on the eye. Although Microsoft has been criticized for PowerPoint’s negative effects on society (some argue that information becomes too condensed), the program’s popularity says it all.