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Why PowerPoint Should Be Banned

Posted by Soulskill on from the hang-on-my-clicker-isn't-working dept.

An anonymous reader writes: An editorial at the Washington Post argues that Microsoft PowerPoint is being relied upon by too many to do too much, and we should start working to get rid of it. "Its slides are oversimplified, and bullet points omit the complexities of nearly any issue. The slides are designed to skip the learning process, which — when it works — involves dialogue, eye-to-eye contact and discussions. Of course PowerPoint has merits — it can help businesses with their sales pitches or let teachers introduce technology into the classroom. But instead of being used as a means for a dynamic engagement, it has become a poor substitute for longer, well-thought-out briefings and technical reports. It has become a crutch."

52 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. To be more specific ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... MEETINGS should be banned.

    1. Re:To be more specific ... by hummassa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In almost thirty years as a professional, I can say I have *NEVER* never never ever being to a productive meeting. A meeting that soothed some insecurity by a boss or client? Sure. A meeting where real decisions where taken after meaningful conversation and discussion? Nope.

      --
      It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    2. Re:To be more specific ... by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      Consultant: Ok, engineers, what makes you unproductive?
      Engineers (unisono): MEETINGS!
      Consultant: Great, we have a start. Let's all sit down together and discuss the matter!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:To be more specific ... by murdocj · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In almost thirty years as a professional, I can say I have *NEVER* never never ever being to a productive meeting. A meeting that soothed some insecurity by a boss or client? Sure. A meeting where real decisions where taken after meaningful conversation and discussion? Nope.

      I bet most of your meetings have been of the scheduled kind. Those meetings, including the "daily standup", take on a life of their own and are very rarely productive. On the other hand, meetings that are organized for a specific goal can be productive if everyone is able to contribute and buy into the result.

    4. Re:To be more specific ... by Spazmania · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Then you haven't been to the right kinds of meetings. I've lost count of the number of meetings I've been to where we draw out architectures on a marker board and half a dozen people's different misunderstands about what we're trying to build coalesce into a useful design.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    5. Re:To be more specific ... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2

      I have. They're invariably conducted standing up between two to four people though. Or perhaps between the same size group, sitting, drinking something alcoholic.

    6. Re:To be more specific ... by jeremyp · · Score: 2

      The common factor in all of those unproductive meetings is you.

      Just saying...

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
    7. Re:To be more specific ... by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 2

      If you don't have any meetings, how do you know what your coworkers are doing? How do you coordinate tasks with them? How do you keep everyone on the same page? Talk to everybody in the team in person? Takes alot more time than just telling everyone in the same room, once.

      Some meetings take too long, some meetings are pointless (especially the ones initiated by managers that don't understand your work) and not everybody has to be in the same meetings. But some meetings are also essential.

    8. Re:To be more specific ... by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 3, Informative

      The problem isn't PowerPoint the problem is that most of the people using it couldn't do a presentation to save their own lives!

      As a bad workman blames his tools its a poor student who blames the black board

      Lets stop blaming the tool because some idiots don't know how to use it.

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  2. But I love it when slides are read to me by jaymz666 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The number of useful powerpoint presentations I have seen can be counted on one hand, but the number of presentations where all the presenter does is read, slowly, the slides to the room is uncountable...

    1. Re:But I love it when slides are read to me by moschner · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem isn't the software, but how people are using it. Banning Power Point won't fix bad end users. They will just find a different way to give crappy presentations.

      Perhaps a better approach is bundle or create software that helps people create presentations from the script on up, and perhaps the software should have one presentation the audience sees and one the presenter sees full of more info or a complete script.

    2. Re:But I love it when slides are read to me by rwa2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The problem isn't the software, but how people are using it. Banning Power Point won't fix bad end users. They will just find a different way to give crappy presentations.

      Perhaps a better approach is bundle or create software that helps people create presentations from the script on up, and perhaps the software should have one presentation the audience sees and one the presenter sees full of more info or a complete script.

      Yeah, PowerPoint can actually do that, what with the "Notes" section that shows up on the presenter screen while the projector output shows the slide.

      Scanned TFA, lots of whining but not really much counterpoint on how to better organize and deliver information *properly* . There's a gratuitous link to http://prezi.com/ at the end, but just having a sexier, nonlinear presentation tool won't be of much help.

      Good presentation delivery is indeed an art. But what properties make a presentation aid helpful?
      The Daily Show is one example that comes to mind for someone who uses visual aids well... by placing an interesting image to associate with a story. When it does display any bulleted text, it is only used to deliver the punchline... so timing is crucial too.

    3. Re:But I love it when slides are read to me by NatasRevol · · Score: 2

      Uh, and if you printed to pdf, it's on page 126. Or with notes, it's on page 252. Or if you printed it 4 up, it's on page 16.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    4. Re:But I love it when slides are read to me by ebrandsberg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem isn't that they are crappy presentations. It is how they are being TAUGHT to present. Sales people are intentionally leaving out information and glossing over facts, because facts can lose a deal. Oh, there are some major cases that some piece of software doesn't handle? Don't present that, that goes in a footnote in the readme file tucked away somewhere. Presentations where products are concerned are drafted and built to never EVER loose a customer, only convince people that the product is the best thing since sliced bread. They are designed to not raise questions, or inform beyond a simplified message. The product isn't the issue--it is how people are being trained to use it, and changing the way a message is presented won't change the message.

  3. reasons by roman_mir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Its slides are oversimplified, and bullet points omit the complexities of nearly any issue.

    - I see, so the reasons to use PowerPoint are exactly the same reasons as the ones to ban PowerPoint.

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
    1. Re:reasons by AK+Marc · · Score: 4, Informative

      When teling someone something, you tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.

      With power point, you show them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then show them what you told them.

      If you use Power Point for anything other than a high-level outline, or animated graphics that are had to show other ways, then you are doing it wrong, and that's not the fault of Power Point.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    2. Re:reasons by AK+Marc · · Score: 2

      You are wrong. Very wrong.

      If you are talking to a class of High Schoolers and you want them to remember a fact, you put that fact on a screen, then ignore it.

      Example Slide:
      Start of the Civil War
      Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861

      You throw up a slide with the fact you want them to remember, then talk about the causes, the buildup, and form the narrative around that date.

      You don't literally read the slide, say something about the slide, then read the slide again. You reinforce the verbal message with a reinforcing visual message. It also helps in that many people learn better visually than aurally, or vice versa. So you use both, with references to each other.

      You don't read slides. If you do that, you are doing it wrong.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    3. Re:reasons by Bite+The+Pillow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Ban the tool because of people who misuse it. Sounds like gun control. And religion control. And everything else ever.

      The proposed "result" of banning PowerPoint is basically the utopian dream if everyone were using it right. And the whole thing is a presentation.

      Katrin Park is an idiot.

    4. Re:reasons by schnell · · Score: 2

      When teling someone something, you tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.

      Please don't take this personally, but OMG PLEASE STAHP. I hear this repeated all the time, and it frustrates me endlessly. Maybe this is the rule of thumb for speaking to mutants, farm animals or teenagers. But if you have an at least moderately intelligent audience whose attendance is not compulsory (e.g. a modern workplace), telling me the same thing three times will make me stop paying attention to you. Training people that you need to repeat themselves three times in a presentation is part of why many presentations are so boring and why we all ignore them which is why you have to repeat yourself three times and NOMAD ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. EXAMINE.

      I do plenty of useful presentations all the time, using the crazy technique of just telling people what I want to communicate to them, one time. (Reiterating important points within a slide if necessary.) If they were multitasking, napping or ignoring the rest of my presentation because they expected to hear it three times, that's their problem. And I don't feel bad.

      --
      "95% of all Slashdot .sig quotes are incorrect or completely fabricated." -Benjamin Franklin
    5. Re:reasons by penguinoid · · Score: 4, Funny

      Can't we just ban stupidity instead?

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
  4. In other words... by mikaere · · Score: 5, Funny
    • * PowerPoint
    • * is no substitute
    • * for
    • * good presentation skills!
    --
    It's good luck to be superstitious
    1. Re:In other words... by ganv · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed, presentation tools can't compensate for poor skills in creating or giving presentations. Do people remember before powerpoint? At the scientific conferences I attended, as often as not people were throwing unreadable transparencies onto the project at a rate significantly faster than anyone in the audience except their collaborators could comprehend the concepts. Now they just flip through readable but incomprehensible power-point slides. It's the humans you have to fix, not the technology.

  5. Wrong by gnu-sucks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    PowerPoint is not the crutch. The crutch is pointless meetings and the desire for "material" when what you really need is a discussion with the right key people in the room.

    Might as well ban PDFs while we're at it, I've seen lots of pointless PDF files too.

    1. Re:Wrong by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Meetings can be made efficient. My meetings usually are. I invite people for their topic to the correct minute. Yes, minute. Give or take 5, but it's patently USELESS to have someone sit in a meeting for an hour if all the matters to him is about 10 minutes thereof. I don't need the design crew to discuss security matters, even though I do need them in the meeting in general. The meeting has an agenda and it has a time slice for every topic to be discussed. If you think you need more time, tell me in advance, but during the meeting, you will have your time slice and what you cannot get done in that slice will either have to wait 'til the next meeting or you will have to discuss it outside.

      It took a few meetings for people to get a hang of it and it was a VERY fierce uphill battle (and I'm glad I had a lot of support from higher up or it would never have had a chance to fly), but now we get more done in a single 45 minute meeting than we used to do in a 4+ hour meeting. Yes, that also means that people have to come prepared and that they have to be PRECISELY on time. But their benefit is that instead of sitting around for hours and staring holes into the wall 'cause things are being discussed that are of no interest to them they come to the meeting, can talk about their topics with everyone they need and be gone again within less than 15 minutes.

      Plus I now need much smaller meeting rooms since few people are going to be around during the whole meeting.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Powerpoint is not documentation by preaction · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's call it what it is: An aid when giving presentations, which are themselves also not documentation. There is no substitute for documentation.

  7. Edward Tufte by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Also has railed about this at length LONG before this article came out, and some of this article referenced him. http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...
    Plus, no one can top, "There are no bullet points like Stalin's bullet points!"

  8. Easy way to fix it. by Lumpy · · Score: 2

    Give everyone in the audience a nerf gun. The moment it takes more than 1 slide to talk about an idea the presenter can be shot. If the slide does not carry information that can not easily be spoken, shoot the presenter. If there is ANY clipart. Shoot the presenter.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  9. Powerpoint resulted in the loss of 2 space shuttle by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Funny
    here and here

    The shuttle disasters Richard Feynman, the late Nobel laureate and CalTech physicist, saw that "bulletized" thinking contributed to the Challenger disaster, where 7 crew members died and a multi-billion dollar craft destroyed due to an O-ring failure. The big problem was that NASA management wasn't really listening to the engineers - and breaking issues up into bullets helped them do that.

    The engineers who worked on the Challenger O-rings knew they weren't qualified for cold weather. But management didn't want to hear it and OK'd the launch despite the engineer's opposition.

    As sometimes happens, disaster ensued.

    In the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster, Prof. Tufte dissects the PowerPoint slides that buried important information - such as volume, mass and velocity - about the large piece of foam insulation that penetrated the Columbia's heat shield. Creating useful engineering reports in PowerPoint is difficult if not impossible.

    And of course, powerpoint makes you stupid

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  10. EMACS IS THE WAY by Tyrannosaur · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I literally had a professor (3 years ago) that put his lecture notes in text documents, and showed them on the projector from his ubuntu laptop using emacs. And he was one of the best CS professors I've ever had.

    This was because he used them as outlines for what he intended to teach during the class. We discussed, worked through things, and had eye-to-eye contact and whatever else the summary says.

    ----Isn't this what powerpoint is for? We don't want to ban powerpoint; people just need to learn to use it properly.

    1. Re:EMACS IS THE WAY by blue9steel · · Score: 2

      I didn't realize emacs had a powerpoint mode, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

  11. Tech in the classroom??? by Radical+Moderate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...or let teachers introduce technology into the classroom. "

    Oh hell no. Tech in the classroom is not an end unto itself, and certainly not a justification for Powerpoint. Don't get me wrong, PP can be a useful tool (in some cases), and yes, it don't work without tech in the classroom. But the idea that any random PP show is valuable because "it's introducing students to technology" is ridiculous. Students are on a first-name basis with technology, they don't need to be introduced to it.

    --
    Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
  12. Just then... by istartedi · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just then there was a concussive shock. Momentarily the Post's reporter was transported into a netherworld of pounding, blinding light as his office exploded in a cloud of acrid smoke and swirling documents. He lost consciousness momentarily. When he awoke, there were several men standing over him with solemn, angry looks on their faces. Their black paramilitary uniforms were outlined in stark contrast against the white-boards and family photographs. "Who... who are you" he struggled to speak.

    "We're the Power Point Rangers".

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  13. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 2

    Banning things does us no favor, but getting the message out does

    http://www.amazon.com/How-Powe...
    http://www.computerworld.com/a...
    https://www.psychologytoday.co...
    http://www.unc.edu/~healdric/P...
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04...

    The summary of all of these articles is that Powerpoint has a limit to how much information it can place on a slide, this is largely a function of screen resolution and visible font size

    This limit is resolution results in 'high level' 10,000 display of topics that does not adequately represent the subject matter
    The result is that people give presentations at a high level and then send out the powerpoint as the notes for the presentation, when in fact any real detailed information would be either omitted or glossed over at that high level

    What we really need is to demand improvements to Powerpoint, like
    1. displaying at legible resolution on a 6ft high by 30 ft wide screen (remember those old blackboards from college Calculus class, that is the level of information density that we need)
    2. Providing linking and drill down like would would expect to see on an executive dashboard. Sure, start at the summary level, but allow the speaker to drill down to the details at any point in the diagram. Also, make this all print out as the 'notes' with footnotes and references to the linked information
    3. Train the presenters to not be satisfied working at the outline level

    I guess that we should not simply blame Powerpoint for making us stupid, when we are stupid for relying on it as it is

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
  14. And replace it with what? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 2

    The same crappy presenters will use whatever other platform to do the exact same crappy job of presenting the info.
    Powerpoint is not the actual problem.

  15. TFA is a PowerPoint presentation by GuB-42 · · Score: 2

    The irony is definitely not lost on the authors...

  16. It never was INTENDED to communicate or educate. by dpbsmith · · Score: 2

    The name of the product says it all. It is not intended for communication, education, or the thoughtful display of information. It's not supposed to facilitate critical thinking by the audience.

    It's intended to give the presenter the power to cloud men's minds... to convince... to project the presenter's views into the minds of the audience as forcefully as possible.

    The once-competitive product from a once-competitor was named Aldus Persuasion. Not Aldus Display, not Aldus Presentation, not Aldus Foils--Aldus Persuasion.

    Someone once called word processors (in the early days before everyone had them) "automatic weapons for inter-corporation turf wars." Much the same can be said of PowerPoint.

    --

    "How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!

  17. I've never seen this use of powerpoint by tompaulco · · Score: 2

    I've never seen powerpoint used for an in depth technical meeting. I have only seen it used to give the 50,000 foot view so that the higher-ups eyes don't glaze over during the meeting.

    --
    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  18. Another reason to kill PowerPoint by kit_triforce · · Score: 2

    I work in the education industry in a large-format print environment. PowerPoint is one of the main pieces of software chosen to make large academic posters (36" x 48" commonly, but I've had larger than 60"x 96" designed in PowerPoint). It is also the main reason there are delays and errors with said posters.

    Our department strongly recommends that faculty and students use either Adobe Illustrator or the free open source Inkscape to create their posters. Less than 1% of posters created in these programs have any issues with the format, while PowerPoint currently has issues in roughly 50% of the files we have received in the past, with PowerPoint in an OSX system being by far the worse offender. The problem has been somewhat mitigated with requiring all submissions be in PDF (which works well with our proprietary ripping software), but has only reduced the issues, not eliminated them.

    It should be noted that various other office suites and other programs have been used to generate the posters we print, but nothing is quite as bad as those coming from the Microsoft Office suite (don't get me started on Publisher). And to those suggesting a raster export (jpg, tif, png, bmp, etc) the files quickly become to large for an average user to move them easily (less an issue today than 5-10 years ago) and text/finer elements often become fuzzy and plugged in all but the highest resolution files.

    So yes, please, let's all kill PowerPoint (and throw Publisher on the pyre while we're at it).

  19. WTF? by rev0lt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Powerpoint is a tool. Don't blame the tool, blame whoever is making the content. The truth is, doing informational slides require skill, knowledge and a good speaker to present them - it doesn't really matter if you're using acetate sheets or some fancy top-of-the-line video editor. Its like blaming typewriters for making bad literature. And if you 're afraid powerpoint is going to make you stupid, guess what? You already are.

  20. Better analogy by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Someone used a hammer to drive a screw. We should consider using more useful tools for the problem at hand.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  21. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by Will.Woodhull · · Score: 2

    What we really need is to demand improvements to the teachers, instructors, and course developers whose reliance on PowerPoint is an abuse of the classroom. FTFY.

    Competent educators know damn well that PowerPoint presentations are inadequate in any setting more advanced than teaching college students how to tie their shoelaces. An obvious reliance on PowerPoint for "educational experiences" is an obvious sign of an incompetent educator. Take away that PowerPoint and you still have an incompetent educator. But someone who knows what he is doing in the classroom might use PowerPoint along with a battery of other tools, from rote memory exercises (On old Olympus' towering top a Finn and German view a hop) to advanced computer simulations that demonstrate esoteric features of organic chemistry. The competent educator will choose the most suitable tool from the ones available. Most of the time, that will not be PowerPoint: it is never the sharpest tool in the shed, but sometimes it is the most suitable for the task at hand.

    --
    Will
  22. Re:Powerpoint resulted in the loss of 2 space shut by Eristone · · Score: 2

    Considering PowerPoint didn't exist in 1986 (little more Windows in any usable GUI form), methinks that your first example is false. Secondly, why would you use PowerPoint to create an Engineering Report? Incorrect use of tools... who is the blame, the tool or the user?

  23. Re:Powerpoint resulted in the loss of 2 space shut by Goldsmith · · Score: 2

    Wow.

    I know Microsoft gets hammered around here, but blaming the Challenger disaster (1986) on PowerPoint (1990) is really stretching the facts to match the story.

    Bullet points and slide presentations did not start with PowerPoint. If anything, the "bullet point thinking" of the Challenger tragedy shows that we were already experts at presenting information poorly before we had software tools to make us more efficient at it.

  24. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not really, some of the analysis following the Challenger disaster at NASA concluded that the use of Powerpoint limited the ability to put enough relevant information on the screen to allow analysts to make the necessary connections to identify risks.
    http://www.edwardtufte.com/tuf...

    In a similar study performed by the Army, the conclusion was that all of the necessary detail that would have been included in a whitepaper was trimmed away for the 5-bulletpoints that they could put on the screen, to quote the article:“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04...

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
  25. Re:The difference between a useful meeting and by garyisabusyguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The first time that I was pressed into being a project manager was at a subsidiary of a new telecom company.
    We inherited some basic rules
    1. Whoever called the meeting had to prepare the info for the meeting and send it out to the participants at least a day early
    2. The meeting could be no longer than thirty minutes
    3. Whoever called the meeting would prepare a summary and send it out to all participants with a list of action items before the end of the day

    The unwritten rule was that if you started wasting people's time they would stop coming to your meetings
    This put the power into the hands of the people doing the work and made the PM a servant to getting work done
    That is how is should be, I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to apply the 'unwritten rule' and walk out on some PM that was just sucking all of the intelligence out of the room and keeping people from working

    --
    Wherever You Go, There You Are
  26. Re: Ancillary titles to TFA by hawkeey · · Score: 2

    http://www.edwardtufte.com/bbo...

  27. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by Bongo · · Score: 3, Funny

    “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

    Considering the military is often all about filling problems with bullets, I do indeed respect that he knows what he's talking about.

  28. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 2

    I fail to see how this is a fault of the tool. I do technical presentations, and when the material is too complex for Powerpoint I tell the audience that fact then don't present it in that forum. 99% of the time Powerpoint does the job.

  29. Re:Most people are doing it wrong by Cutterman · · Score: 2

    "The problem is "bullet points", not PowerPoint." Amen!

    Building and presenting a good talk is not easy, whatever tools you use.
    Chalk, transparencies, slides, Powerpoint et. al. - done 'em all over the years.

    The problem is learning to make a good presentation, not Powerpoint.
    Unfortunately Powerpoint makes it very easy to dress up a simple talk
    wirh all sorts of ridiculous fonts, bullets, swooping text, music clips and whatnot
    that are completely unnecessary and distracting.

    It doesn't have to be dull (in fact it shouldn't be) but informative and (a little) entertaining.

    Powerpoint (or LibreOffice Presentation or Keynote) are very powerful tools for
    conveying information. Unfortunately they are usually very badly used.

    The Cutter

  30. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2

    That sounds like a much more plausible reason for spaceships crashing than "PowerPoint did it."

  31. Re:Ancillary titles to TFA by carbonates · · Score: 2

    It depends on what you are presenting. As a geologist I am most often forced to put detailed maps on PowerPoint slides. The days when I could plot my map out on a 42 inch by 60 inch sheet and lay it down in front of management, describe the details and show the context from that one sheet of paper, ended when someone discovered I could cram that big map onto a PowerPoint slide.

    The PowerPoint slides get distributed and often become the technical documentation of the decisions made. Yet they do not contain the technical details and often do not even include enough text to explain the ideas they are presenting. Five years later, I review a PowerPoint that explains why someone spent $50 million dollars on a drilling program and I still have no clue, because it was documented with PowerPoint. If you only put 5 items on each slide, then you either have 200 slides or you do a huge disservice to anyone who is forced to view your presentation later when you are not there to explain it.

    Because of resolution problems I cannot even place a line or an arrow with enough precision to actually be in the right place over a slightly detailed image. For years, I resisted by using Adobe Acrobat presentations, which allowed me to do much more precise graphic representation, but the cheap readily available PowerPoint made it impossible to keep using the much more expensive Acrobat and the extra Adobe applications (Illustrator now, but I once used MacroMedia Freehand for all my work) are hard to get corporate IT departments to provide. At present I am not even allowed a full copy of Adobe Acrobat- only the reader version. I've worked at some companies where I provided my own software in order to avoid using PowerPoint. It is a losing battle. But believe me, RESOLUTION is the BIGGEST flaw in PowerPoint that makes it a poor solution for a technical presentation.

  32. Re: Ancillary titles to TFA by nytes · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure if I can accept that.

    Could you put a Power Point presentation together that would explain it?

    --
    -- I have monkeys in my pants.