What’s Hot.
Streamlined appearance makes presentations easier to arrange. Formatting options are more easily located. Modifications and new features make PowerPoint 2008 as good as or better than Keynote.
What’s Not.
Less intuitive interface and complicated toolbars might make PowerPoint 2008 a bit daunting to novice presentation makers. This version for Mac, while greatly improved, still lacks some of the capabilities offered to Windows users.
The bottom line.
While Keynote might prove more fun and friendly, practicality pushes you to use PowerPoint 2008 to ensure that your presentations are compatible with most corporate presentation set-ups.
With the release of PowerPoint 2008 for Mac, Microsoft has offered a much improved application, which should help Mac-lovers create PowerPoint presentations a little less begrudgingly. While not as entirely intuitive as Keynote in design, PowerPoint 2008 introduces many changes that make the application simpler to use. Although not all of the capabilities offered to Windows users are included in PowerPoint 2008, Mac users will still find that it offers more formatting options overall than Keynote.
Perhaps most apparent is the updated Normal View. Microsoft has replaced the Slide and Outline views of PowerPoint 2004, with a 3-part view that makes working on your entire presentation easier. In the main part of the window, users now see their current slide, while a separate frame displays speaker notes. On the left side of the window, users can view preceding and following slides in a thumbnail or outline view, making it easier to see where you are in your presentation. You can also reorganize, delete or duplicate slides in the left-hand view.
Microsoft has created a much cleaner look overall by modifying PowerPoint’s toolbar docking capabilities. While working, users can display most toolbars docked or undocked. All docked toolbars are set within the same window, which makes all formatting functions easier to locate. The formatting functions themselves are more centralized and logically grouped within the toolbars. Even better, the formatting palate will automatically change according to the type of object you have currently selected.
Unlike Keynote, PowerPoint includes a Masterslide view that allows you to set the tone for all of your slide layouts. Making changes on the Masterslide will make changes on all slides associated with it, which is incredibly useful when you make formatting changes during your final stages of editing. Speaking from experience, however, the Masterslide view is not always as easy to understand as it might first appear. I just spent a year of my life in PowerPoint 2007 and some Masterslide functions still remain a mystery to me.
PowerPoint’s Smart Art graphics, although arguably not as intuitive as Keynote’s pre-designed graphics, allow users to create just about any sort of chart or diagram imaginable. Users will find that Smart Art graphics are relatively easy to resize and align with the help of PowerPoint’s Dynamic Guide lines.
To run Office 2008, you will need a Mac with an Intel, PowerPC G4 or PowerPC G5 with a 500 MHz processor and at least 512 MB of RAM. Office 2008 also requires that you be running OS X 10.4.9 or later.
All in all, PowerPoint offers more presentation creation capabilities than Keynote. Although you can do much more with PowerPoint, a novice presentation creator might have better luck with Keynote’s scaled-down features. The rub here is that, considering that most companies use PC’s to deliver presentations, you’re probably going to be stuck using PowerPoint most of the time. Keynote will export to PowerPoint, of course, but the loss of your beloved Keynote effects will most likely leave you disappointed.
