Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Presentations on the Go, Part Two: IAPresenter from IAStyle
Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 08:30 AM
In part two of the IAPresenter CF VGA card review, we look at the other side of the coin. You can have a great piece of hardware to hook up to your projector, but if you don't have the application to show off your presentation masterpiece, you've got nothing to show (as it were). Here, we'll take a look at the applications IAStyle includes with their IAPresenter CF VGA card -- focussing mainly on IAPresenter itself.
You've spent a lot of time getting the presentation 'just right' for that big client meeting, and you want to be sure it goes off without a hitch. You've got to have presentation software you can count on to deliver your message the way you want it.
Fortunately, IAStyle has provided a solid set of applications that will not only handle the slides, but allow you show off some other parts of your product as well. When you buy their IAPresenter CF VGA card, you also get:
On the Desktop PC, the IAPresenter Converter software is also installed, which allows you to convert PowerPoint files to the IAPresenter format (with a .iap extension) required for the IAPresenter application on the Pocket PC. That's quite a bundle for the price of the card! For this review, I'll focus mainly on the conversion utility and the IAPresenter software, but I'll also throw in some thoughts about IAAlbum, IAMirror, and IAScreenShot.
On Your Mark (Converting PowerPoint...)
The IAPresenter Conversion software is provided on the desktop PC to convert PowerPoint presentatations (.ppt file format) to the IAPresenter format used by IAPresenter on the Pocket PC. Unfortunately, the conversion software only deals with PowerPoint presentations, so those using other presentation software packages are out of luck.
I decided to give IAPresenter a good hefty trial by converting and running an 86-slide training seminar I give on a regular basis. The presentation includes almost all the features I can think of in PowerPoint -- including slide masters, notes, transitions, builds, animated images and sounds. There are a number of options available on the conversion -- from the resolution desired, to the quality of image conversion.
Figure 1: IAPresenter Converter software screen
The IAPresenter Converter software handled the conversion very confidently, getting finished in about 2 minutes. The original .ppt file was 2.3Mb and the resultant .iap file was approximately 3Mb. After conversion, I transferred the file to my Pocket PC using the 'drag and drop' options of Activesync's Explore option. One thing to note on PowerPoint presentations: If you make use of imagery on your Master Slides (such as white lettering on dark backgrounds for the slide titles), don't forget to uncheck the "Omit background graphics from Master" option in the Format/Background menu of PowerPoint. If this is checked, the conversion will eliminate the graphics from the slides.
You can also have the conversion to .iap format done 'on the fly' by a linkage provided between the IAPresenter Converter software and ActiveSync. Then, as you 'drag and drop' your .ppt file from your PC to Pocket PC in Explore mode, the conversion is automatically included.
Figure 2: ActiveSync Conversion Options screen
Get Set (Setting Up)
Once the converted file is on your Pocket PC, make sure you put it in the My Documents folder in main memory. IAPresenter expects presentations to be located here, or in one of the sub-folders. Also, IAPresenter will only work with .iap files -- it cannot use Pocket PowerPoint or other presentation formats. I was pleasantly surprised when I loaded my large presentation, since IAPresenter handled it without any hiccups.
The main screen of IAPresenter provides a 'split view' of the current slide and a set of thumbnails of the slides surrounding it. The dropdown at the top allows you to select any slide in your presentation. The Thumbnail section has a scroll bar on the right to move through the slides as well, and tapping on a thumbnail will move you directly to that slide.
Figure 3: Main 'split' screen of IAPresenter
From the Edit tab, options are available to add slides from other presentations (converted into .iap format first), delete slides or hide them from the slideshow. You can also add or alter the transitions from slide to slide. However, there's no capability to alter or fix builds within the slides themselves.
Getting things ready for your presentation are a little trickier than I suspected, and it took me a couple of times to get everything working the way I wanted it. From the Edit menu at the bottom, select Options, then pick the VGA tab. Here you define the output device (the CF VGA card). According to IAStyle's web site, the Margi CF VGA card and remote are also supported, but I wasn't able to check this.
Figure 4: VGA output tab options
You also set the type of output (VGA, S-Video, or Composite Video). Note that output signal is only provided to the type selected, so if you have your monitor connected to the VGA port and have selected S-Video output, you're not going to see anything. As you can see from the screen shot, there are also lots of options for the resolution desired on the output.
If you're going to use the remote control, this would be the time to select the Remote tab, and make sure the IAPresenter CF VGA has been selected from the dropdown list.
Figure 5: Remote tab options
You should also check out the Display tab to make sure you have the colour depth correctly set for your slides.
Figure 6: Display tab options
Fortunately, you can tell IAPresenter to save all these options for the next time you do the presentation. (My advice -- get there early and check it all anyway...)
Go! (Using IAPresenter)
Once you've got all the options set, we should be good to go, right? Well, not quite. There's another little difference between IAPresenter and PowerPoint. If you select SlideShow (either from the icon or from the View menu) the slides will go into presentation mode -- on the Pocket PC display, not out the CF VGA card! To get the slides onto the big screen, you need to select the VGA Slide Show option.
Once you've got the presentation going, everything proceeds pretty much the way you'd expect it. IAPresenter is one of the first Pocket PC applications I've seen that supports transitions and builds, and I use builds a lot in my presentations. The one I converted uses a number of different animated builds to break up a very long day and IAPresenter handled them perfectly. However, I did find a couple of times there were delays in the slide-to-slide transitions. I don't know if this was because of the nature of the slides or the size of the presentation, but looking down at the Pocket PC, I could see that the wedgie timer was going during the delays.
Sounds are also supported in IAPresenter, but are produced through the Pocket PC's audio. If you have to use sounds, I suggest bringing along a Pocket Amplifier and Pocket Speakers. :wink:
To move along in the presentation, you can either tap the screen, use the jog dial, or have it automatically timed to move from image to image. I prefer to set the pace myself, so I turn off the timers. I really appreciated being able to have the Notes page on my Pocket PC while displaying the presentation on the big screen -- this is the way things were intended to work. And they advance together!
Unfortunately, IAPresenter doesn't provide any way to modify the content of slides to personalize the presentation for different clients. Some other products let you change the Title slide for this purpose. It does however, let you hide slides and change the nature of transitions between slides. There's even a mode for unattended presentations.
I played with the VGA pointer option a bit, and it's OK, but it's not something I would use on a regular basis, since it ties me to the Pocket PC and I like to 'work the room'. I prefer actually going to the screen or using a handheld laser pointer.
Figure 7: VGA pointer options
I also tried the VGA Thumbnail, which displays thumbnails of your slides on the big screen, and allows you to use the remote to select the next slide. This would be kind of neat with more technical audiences, but I couldn't get it to stay on the screen long enough to make a selection. As soon as I used the remote, it went back to slideshow mode. I also found that after a number of quick button pushes on the remote, the slideshow started moving along by itself. The only way to correct that was to stop it at the Pocket PC, and restart the show.
Documentation
As I mentioned in my review of the IAPresenter hardware, all of the documentation for using the product (other than a Quick Start/Setup description) is located in Help files on the Pocket PC. While the Help text provided seems pretty complete, reading it on the Pocket PC is not my favorite way of discovering all the features of the product. Most times I just play around until I get it to work, but sometimes (usually later) I like to just sit down quietly and read through the entire manual, to see if there's something I missed.
IAAlbum, IAMirror, and IAScreenShot
As I mentioned before, IAStyle has done their homework and recognized that a mobile presenter's package needs more than just the card and slideshow software. They've included IAAlbum and IAMirror in their CF VGA card package at no extra cost.
IAAlbum provides the ability to gather and manipulate images from various sources into a slideshow of your own creation. It's not PowerPoint, but it does allow you to add captions, etc. to existing images.
IAMirror allows you to display what's happening on your Pocket PC out to the display device attached to the IAPresenter CF VGA card. It has the ability to show the current view and up to 3 previously captured 'snapshots'. This is especially useful when you're trying to show various aspects of an application, or a developing sequence. Capturing the screens in the multi-panel display and placing them in the proper positions is a bit awkward, requiring the user to select the appropriate area, then doing the screen capture, then going back to the selection panel to set the next area, etc. etc. I wished there was some way of just saying "Capture these next 4 screens and place them in the display areas in the same order." The refresh rate on IAMirror is a bit slower than that of the Pocket PC screen itself, so I wouldn't suggest trying to show a movie on the 'big screen' using this software.
IAScreenShot does exactly that -- allows you to capture and save images from your Pocket PC's screen to standard file formats. There are various utilities out there to do the same thing (...and some are free!) but I used IAScreenShot to gather all the images for this and my review of the IAPresenter CF VGA card. It was very simple and straight-forward
to use. (You can see the snapshot icons in the bottom right of each of the screens. These are removed once you register (and pay for) your copy of IAScreenShot) You can establish any of the hardware buttons as the 'shutter' and even specify a time delay. Images are saved as .bmp, .gif, or .jpg and resolutions can be set between 60 and 300 dpi. For me, doing reviews, it was handy to have the application save directly to JPEGs, rather than having to save then convert later. A 15-day trial version of IAScreenShot is included on the CD that comes with the card.
Gotchas
All in all, I have to say this is a pretty complete, competant package for the roving presenter. Here are a couple of things, though, that I'd like to see in the next release:
IAPresenter (plus the PC-based Conversion software), IAMirror, and IAAlbum all come with the IAPresenter CF VGA Card, which is available from IAStyle for US$99.95.
The software is also available separately from Handango. IAPresenter v2.31 for US$19.95, IAAlbum v2.3 for US$19.95 and IAScreenShot 2 for US$9.95. [Affiliate]
Specifications
According to the IAStyle web site, the IAPresenter CF VGA card is supported on the following Pocket PC platforms:
Here are the memory requirements for each of the applications included with the IAPresenter CF VGA card:
IAStyle has developed a very capable package for the mobile presenter which can easily replace lugging around a laptop. The packaging is well done and the price is quite reasonable for the card and software.
You've spent a lot of time getting the presentation 'just right' for that big client meeting, and you want to be sure it goes off without a hitch. You've got to have presentation software you can count on to deliver your message the way you want it.
Fortunately, IAStyle has provided a solid set of applications that will not only handle the slides, but allow you show off some other parts of your product as well. When you buy their IAPresenter CF VGA card, you also get:
- IAPresenter -- a full-function PowerPoint slide presentation package
- IAAlbum -- for viewing and managing images on your Pocket PC; even creating your own slideshows
- IAMirror -- for projecting single or multiple Pocket PC screens onto a projector or TV monitor.
On the Desktop PC, the IAPresenter Converter software is also installed, which allows you to convert PowerPoint files to the IAPresenter format (with a .iap extension) required for the IAPresenter application on the Pocket PC. That's quite a bundle for the price of the card! For this review, I'll focus mainly on the conversion utility and the IAPresenter software, but I'll also throw in some thoughts about IAAlbum, IAMirror, and IAScreenShot.
On Your Mark (Converting PowerPoint...)
The IAPresenter Conversion software is provided on the desktop PC to convert PowerPoint presentatations (.ppt file format) to the IAPresenter format used by IAPresenter on the Pocket PC. Unfortunately, the conversion software only deals with PowerPoint presentations, so those using other presentation software packages are out of luck.
I decided to give IAPresenter a good hefty trial by converting and running an 86-slide training seminar I give on a regular basis. The presentation includes almost all the features I can think of in PowerPoint -- including slide masters, notes, transitions, builds, animated images and sounds. There are a number of options available on the conversion -- from the resolution desired, to the quality of image conversion.
Figure 1: IAPresenter Converter software screen
The IAPresenter Converter software handled the conversion very confidently, getting finished in about 2 minutes. The original .ppt file was 2.3Mb and the resultant .iap file was approximately 3Mb. After conversion, I transferred the file to my Pocket PC using the 'drag and drop' options of Activesync's Explore option. One thing to note on PowerPoint presentations: If you make use of imagery on your Master Slides (such as white lettering on dark backgrounds for the slide titles), don't forget to uncheck the "Omit background graphics from Master" option in the Format/Background menu of PowerPoint. If this is checked, the conversion will eliminate the graphics from the slides.
You can also have the conversion to .iap format done 'on the fly' by a linkage provided between the IAPresenter Converter software and ActiveSync. Then, as you 'drag and drop' your .ppt file from your PC to Pocket PC in Explore mode, the conversion is automatically included.
Figure 2: ActiveSync Conversion Options screen
Get Set (Setting Up)
Once the converted file is on your Pocket PC, make sure you put it in the My Documents folder in main memory. IAPresenter expects presentations to be located here, or in one of the sub-folders. Also, IAPresenter will only work with .iap files -- it cannot use Pocket PowerPoint or other presentation formats. I was pleasantly surprised when I loaded my large presentation, since IAPresenter handled it without any hiccups.
The main screen of IAPresenter provides a 'split view' of the current slide and a set of thumbnails of the slides surrounding it. The dropdown at the top allows you to select any slide in your presentation. The Thumbnail section has a scroll bar on the right to move through the slides as well, and tapping on a thumbnail will move you directly to that slide.
Figure 3: Main 'split' screen of IAPresenter
From the Edit tab, options are available to add slides from other presentations (converted into .iap format first), delete slides or hide them from the slideshow. You can also add or alter the transitions from slide to slide. However, there's no capability to alter or fix builds within the slides themselves.
Getting things ready for your presentation are a little trickier than I suspected, and it took me a couple of times to get everything working the way I wanted it. From the Edit menu at the bottom, select Options, then pick the VGA tab. Here you define the output device (the CF VGA card). According to IAStyle's web site, the Margi CF VGA card and remote are also supported, but I wasn't able to check this.
Figure 4: VGA output tab options
You also set the type of output (VGA, S-Video, or Composite Video). Note that output signal is only provided to the type selected, so if you have your monitor connected to the VGA port and have selected S-Video output, you're not going to see anything. As you can see from the screen shot, there are also lots of options for the resolution desired on the output.
If you're going to use the remote control, this would be the time to select the Remote tab, and make sure the IAPresenter CF VGA has been selected from the dropdown list.
Figure 5: Remote tab options
You should also check out the Display tab to make sure you have the colour depth correctly set for your slides.
Figure 6: Display tab options
Fortunately, you can tell IAPresenter to save all these options for the next time you do the presentation. (My advice -- get there early and check it all anyway...)
Go! (Using IAPresenter)
Once you've got all the options set, we should be good to go, right? Well, not quite. There's another little difference between IAPresenter and PowerPoint. If you select SlideShow (either from the icon or from the View menu) the slides will go into presentation mode -- on the Pocket PC display, not out the CF VGA card! To get the slides onto the big screen, you need to select the VGA Slide Show option.
Once you've got the presentation going, everything proceeds pretty much the way you'd expect it. IAPresenter is one of the first Pocket PC applications I've seen that supports transitions and builds, and I use builds a lot in my presentations. The one I converted uses a number of different animated builds to break up a very long day and IAPresenter handled them perfectly. However, I did find a couple of times there were delays in the slide-to-slide transitions. I don't know if this was because of the nature of the slides or the size of the presentation, but looking down at the Pocket PC, I could see that the wedgie timer was going during the delays.
Sounds are also supported in IAPresenter, but are produced through the Pocket PC's audio. If you have to use sounds, I suggest bringing along a Pocket Amplifier and Pocket Speakers. :wink:
To move along in the presentation, you can either tap the screen, use the jog dial, or have it automatically timed to move from image to image. I prefer to set the pace myself, so I turn off the timers. I really appreciated being able to have the Notes page on my Pocket PC while displaying the presentation on the big screen -- this is the way things were intended to work. And they advance together!
Unfortunately, IAPresenter doesn't provide any way to modify the content of slides to personalize the presentation for different clients. Some other products let you change the Title slide for this purpose. It does however, let you hide slides and change the nature of transitions between slides. There's even a mode for unattended presentations.
I played with the VGA pointer option a bit, and it's OK, but it's not something I would use on a regular basis, since it ties me to the Pocket PC and I like to 'work the room'. I prefer actually going to the screen or using a handheld laser pointer.
Figure 7: VGA pointer options
I also tried the VGA Thumbnail, which displays thumbnails of your slides on the big screen, and allows you to use the remote to select the next slide. This would be kind of neat with more technical audiences, but I couldn't get it to stay on the screen long enough to make a selection. As soon as I used the remote, it went back to slideshow mode. I also found that after a number of quick button pushes on the remote, the slideshow started moving along by itself. The only way to correct that was to stop it at the Pocket PC, and restart the show.
Documentation
As I mentioned in my review of the IAPresenter hardware, all of the documentation for using the product (other than a Quick Start/Setup description) is located in Help files on the Pocket PC. While the Help text provided seems pretty complete, reading it on the Pocket PC is not my favorite way of discovering all the features of the product. Most times I just play around until I get it to work, but sometimes (usually later) I like to just sit down quietly and read through the entire manual, to see if there's something I missed.
IAAlbum, IAMirror, and IAScreenShot
As I mentioned before, IAStyle has done their homework and recognized that a mobile presenter's package needs more than just the card and slideshow software. They've included IAAlbum and IAMirror in their CF VGA card package at no extra cost.
IAAlbum provides the ability to gather and manipulate images from various sources into a slideshow of your own creation. It's not PowerPoint, but it does allow you to add captions, etc. to existing images.
IAMirror allows you to display what's happening on your Pocket PC out to the display device attached to the IAPresenter CF VGA card. It has the ability to show the current view and up to 3 previously captured 'snapshots'. This is especially useful when you're trying to show various aspects of an application, or a developing sequence. Capturing the screens in the multi-panel display and placing them in the proper positions is a bit awkward, requiring the user to select the appropriate area, then doing the screen capture, then going back to the selection panel to set the next area, etc. etc. I wished there was some way of just saying "Capture these next 4 screens and place them in the display areas in the same order." The refresh rate on IAMirror is a bit slower than that of the Pocket PC screen itself, so I wouldn't suggest trying to show a movie on the 'big screen' using this software.
IAScreenShot does exactly that -- allows you to capture and save images from your Pocket PC's screen to standard file formats. There are various utilities out there to do the same thing (...and some are free!) but I used IAScreenShot to gather all the images for this and my review of the IAPresenter CF VGA card. It was very simple and straight-forward
to use. (You can see the snapshot icons in the bottom right of each of the screens. These are removed once you register (and pay for) your copy of IAScreenShot) You can establish any of the hardware buttons as the 'shutter' and even specify a time delay. Images are saved as .bmp, .gif, or .jpg and resolutions can be set between 60 and 300 dpi. For me, doing reviews, it was handy to have the application save directly to JPEGs, rather than having to save then convert later. A 15-day trial version of IAScreenShot is included on the CD that comes with the card.
Gotchas
All in all, I have to say this is a pretty complete, competant package for the roving presenter. Here are a couple of things, though, that I'd like to see in the next release:
- An ability to load other presentation file formats -- like Pocket PowerPoint
- An ability to load files from other locations besides My Documents
- Printable documentation (possibly as a PDF on the PC?)
- Selecting the 'Slideshow' icon provides output to both the VGA and the Pocket PC's display. Then provide a 'blackout' switch from the Pocket PC, so that you can make adjustments to the presentation without showing them on the big screen. This would be more intuitive for me.
- Some way to 'personalize' the presentation by being able to edit/add text to at least the Title slide
IAPresenter (plus the PC-based Conversion software), IAMirror, and IAAlbum all come with the IAPresenter CF VGA Card, which is available from IAStyle for US$99.95.
The software is also available separately from Handango. IAPresenter v2.31 for US$19.95, IAAlbum v2.3 for US$19.95 and IAScreenShot 2 for US$9.95. [Affiliate]
Specifications
According to the IAStyle web site, the IAPresenter CF VGA card is supported on the following Pocket PC platforms:
- iPAQ 3600 though 5450 (with expansion sleeve)
- HP Jornada 540 and 560 series
- Dell Axim X5
- NEC Mobile Pro
- Fujitsu Pocket LOOX
- Toshiba e550G/e570/e740, and there are more listed on their site.
- Output: VGA/SVGA, NTSC/PAL Composite Video, and S-Video
- Language Support: English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Traditional and Simplified Chinese
- Warranty: One Year
Here are the memory requirements for each of the applications included with the IAPresenter CF VGA card:
- IAPresenter CF VGA card driver = 68K
- IAPresenter application = 1.3M
- IAAlbum application = 1.1M
- IAMirror application = 248K
- IAPhone Manager = 608K
- IAScreen Shot = 420K
IAStyle has developed a very capable package for the mobile presenter which can easily replace lugging around a laptop. The packaging is well done and the price is quite reasonable for the card and software.
