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Review: Pocket SlideShow for Microsoft Smartphone
If you are considering to buy a program for your Microsoft Smartphone, that allows for viewing of Microsoft PowerPoint presentations inside of your phone, then read this review first!
Author: Jacek Rutkowski.
(version 3)
Pocket SlideShow program, after installation, appears in the main "Programs" menu of Microsoft Smartphone:
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Here you can see, that we are testing version 1.3:
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After start, the program is showing lately opened presentation. There are several modes of showing it: "Preview" (one slide at a time), "Notes" (only notes for one slide) and "Thumbnails":
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Here is the "Preview" mode:
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... and here you can see what zooming possibilities exist:
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Here is the same slide, but zoomed:
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... and here is the "Full screen" view of this slide:
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Interesting feature of Pocket SlideShow is ability to display also notes embedded inside of Power Point presentations:
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... including proper character formatting!
Here you can see a dialog with general settings of the program (menu "Options / General"):
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... and here you can see slide show settings (menu "Options / Slide Show"):
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Here are slide transition options:
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And here is the part of the dialog, that appears when you copy (by drag&drop) files from PC through ActiveSync´s explorer to the Microsoft smartphone:
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... and you can see in above dialog the resolution of the bitmap to which the presentation is converted.
Alternative (competing) products:
- RepliGo - it works as a viewer of files in RepliGo format - these files are being created by "printing" to them from any windows application - so you actually can print also PowerPoint presentations (Notes of these presentations you need to print separately)
- ClearVue Presentation - it can view PowerPoint presentations natively in the Smartphone, but this product is not released yet - not available for purchase
Related links:
Tips for users of this program:
- to move to the next/previous slide please press cursor right or left
- to pan (move image window) while viewing a slide use keypad buttons 2, 4, 6, 8
- use "*" to zoom out
- use "#" to zoom in
- convert the original PPT file using 320x240 resolution which is the default and recommended setting for the conversion filter - in this way the readability of the presentation viewed inside of the smartphone is better
Negative traits of Pocket SlideShow program:
- this program cannot view native PowerPoint files: you need to convert files from native PowerPoint format to Pocket SlideShow format (*.PSS) - for this purpose you need connect your smartphone to PC and carry out the conversion with ActiveSync
- in order to carry out above mentioned conversion you need to have PowerPoint program installed in your PC - having just PowerPoint viewer for PC is not enough
- presentations are stored in bitmap format, so scaling/zooming capibilities are limited - if you have presentations with a lot of details, then this program may not be able to show you all details
Positive traits of Pocket SlideShow program:
- support for PowerPoint notes (a textual part of the presentations) - even with proper character formatting (RepliGo can´t do it)
- files after conversion are usually smaller than the original PowerPoint files - that is good for many reasons: for example the presentations require much less space in the smartphone, than original PPT files and also viewing them is much faster
- easy viewing of presentations wiht several PowerPoint specific options (not available in RepliGo)
- conversion of PowerPoint files to the internal format of this program is automatic - you just do "drag and drop" with ActiveSync explorer
- some sources (like Microsoft events) provide presentations right away in Pocket SlideShow format (*.PSS) so then there is no need for any conversion - this program is very known in Pocket PC world, therefore some sources deliver presentations in its format too
- it´s cheaper than RepliGo (RepliGo sells for $24.95... while Pocket SlideShow at $9.95) and provides some PowerPoint specific features not available in RepliGo
Conclusions: if you need a program that can show you PowerPoint presentations inside of your Microsoft Smarpthone, then this program may be of interest to you. However before taking buying decision, please go ahead and actually try the program by yourself! In this way you will be able to make your mind, both on the product and on the comments in our review.
To comment on this product or this review click here (in English) or here (in German).
