We always get asked which is better: Palm or Windows Mobile. Though both operating systems have their merits and drawbacks, one of the advantages of owning a Pocket PC is the native support for Microsoft applications. These PDAs even ship with Pocket versions of Outlook, Word, and Excel to increase your productivity, but there's always been one piece missing from the puzzle: PowerPoint. To fill that void, CnetX created Pocket SlideShow, a program that lets you view PowerPoint presentations directly on your handheld. It works on devices with Pocket PC 2002 or later (there is also a smart phone edition for $10), and although you can't create or edit slide shows, you can rearrange slides and modify transitions. More importantly, it gives you a chance to review your presentation. At $22, Pocket SlideShow would make a good addition to any mobile professional's arsenal.
Installation doesn't take too much time or effort. After you download the driver from Handango, an installation wizard pops up with step-by-step directions. Then, after a few mouse clicks, you're on your way to viewing slide shows. One of the beauties of Pocket SlideShow is its simple drag-and-drop transfer method. We easily moved several PowerPoint files from our PC to our test machine, the HP iPaq hx2750. During the transfer, you'll also notice that a screen appears on your PC and gives you four options, depending on how you want to display the file; Compact converts to 240x180, Pocket PC to 320x240, External to 480x360, and High-quality to 640x480. After you make the selection, the program does the rest of the work for you.
To view your slide shows, go to the Programs menu, open Pocket SlideShow, and select your desired file. You can choose to launch the full slide show or just a preview mode. The latter presents a two-pane window with your slide on the top half and your notes at the bottom--a great tool for professionals who want to go over their notes before the big presentation without having to fumble with paper or the ol' laptop. You can also reverse this order via the View menu, or you can swap out the notes for thumbnails of all your slides. But wait--there's more. Under the Edit menu, you can opt to hide slides if you no longer want them in the rotation, or you can choose from 42 transition effects, including Checkerboard Across, Fade Through Black, and Split Vertical Out. You can zoom in and out, rearrange the slide order, and merge presentations. As far as editing, though, that's all you get; you can't change the text or graphics of individual slides or add notes.
When you're finally ready to view the finished product, you can hit the slide-show button on the bottom taskbar, and off you go. The program automatically switches the frames to landscape mode for better viewing, and by tapping on the small arrow in the lower-left corner, you get access to a number of other features and a pen tool for writing on the slide itself. If you have an external VGA card or an S-Video output to connect to a monitor or a projector, you could even give the presentation straight from your PDA.
We viewed a handful of presentations on our hx2750 with the help of Pocket SlideShow, from ordinary, text-based files to more complicated, graphics-intensive numbers, and the program didn't skip a beat. No formatting was lost during the conversion, either; they truly were minireplicas of the original files. Rearranging the order of the presentation was just a matter of dragging and dropping the slides while in the thumbnail view. The one downfall is that the program can't support animations, but that's not a huge deal if you're just out to review your notes.
Overall, Pocket SlideShow is a pretty intuitive program, and you shouldn't have too many problems using it. However, there were several occasions where questions arose, and the spartan help section that installs on your PDA during initial setup didn't provide much in the way of answers. CnetX's Web site is also pretty light in the help department, although you can send an e-mail to the company's support team.
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