Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Good, but StarOffice Impress is as good or better
I've been using Ppt for a while but not anymore. Before I upgraded, that is when I was considering upgrading, I downloaded OpenOffice.org, the free version of StarOffice, and I was blown away. It opened all my PowerPoint files, and it has most of the same features. I use Impress all the time now, whether my clients need Impress or PowerPoint file formats. Does'em both.Try Impress first, from the OpenOffice.org or StarOffice office suite.
Rating: - Good product, ridiculous price, and there's no point.
My last contract was with a subsidiary of Microsoft so they gave me MS Office XP, including PowerPoint. I didn't have to shell out the bucks for it. And it's a nice product. There's a little too much autoformatting but it's reasonably easy to say no, stop that, keep it normal. And Clippy doesn't come up. But before that contract, and since then because I'm used to them, I've used StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. I've used them both and am really impressed, there's actually an alternative to Microsoft Office that's FREE. Well, OpenOffice is free and StarOffice which has a few other files so they charge you a bit for them. But they both open PowerPoint and Word and Excel files, and save back to those formats too, and 9 times out of 10 they do it perfectly. I've done lots of presentations, including animation and linking to URLs, etc., in OpenOffice and it's really good. FREE really good software. So I don't see why anyone needs to get this product. A few key things in OpenOffice.org -- different layouts, so you can look at it as a regular slide, handouts, outline, and in background and layer views too. I've done some great backgrounds since the drawing tools let you put really small gifs or vector graphics in the background once and it doesn't inflate your file size. Plus the file sizes with OpenOffice.org are spectacularly small. I opened up my PowerPoint presentation for a contract, opened it in OpenOffice.org, and the file size was suddenly half as big and it looked just the same as it did in PowerPoint. So basically, here's the deal. I'm really happy doing all my work now in OpenOffice.org instead of PowerPoint, and while I'm not a power power power user I definitely put it through its paces. Download OpenOffice.org before you get PowerPoint, or get StarOffice if you feel like you should pay for your software. PowerPoint ain't your only option.
Rating: - Nice, but worth the money? Get OpenOffice.org for free
It's a lovely product; aside from a little too much automatic formatting, it does what I want it to. However, A) my employer bought it for me and B) I don't do much with it. And everything want to do with it, OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) does for me. So I don't see the point. Openoffice opens PowerPoint files, does lots of slide type features, and unless you need to do really spectacular effects, you should be fine with the FREE OpenOffice suite. You can try StarOffice too; it costs a little more than free but way less than PowerPoint. OpenOffice has some pretty cool three D drawing effects included, plus all the standard slide effects and object effects for sucking in bullet points from the side, etc. You can print handouts, notes, all that stuff. Try OpenOffice.org before you spend your car payment on PowerPoint!
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