As a University Lecturer, I found Power Point extremely useful...

While at first I thought of spreading the rumor that Tootler was (once) one of those managers who likes his naps, I will agree that for a lecturer a Power Point slide show can be useful as an adjunct to a lecture. Publishing a PP or other slide show as a stand-alone article remains on my list of "stupids."

If the slide show is designed as it should be, and the only way one can reasonably be put together, it cannot show more than "highlights" or "summary points." As an accessory to a real presentation the slides can direct attention to the main point, while someone explains it; but the explanation must be a hand-out at the pitch, and most people who learned anything will keep the explanation and discard the PP crap.

The real reason the magazine editors have begun using the slide-show format likely is because it's harder for most people to copy and save their stuff. (Built in DRM?) My observation has to be that they seriously over-value what they're putting out. A recent review by one of the big financial think(?) tanks reported that among occupations requiring a college degree, ranked by average salaries, magazine and newspaper writers were at the bottom of the list. Maybe there's a reason. Even librarians (we all know who they are) came in a little above them (on average).

I looked at OpenOffice a while back, and although most people would find it fairly comparable to Word, I found quite a few Word functions that I couldn't replicate, or even imitate adequately in OO, and they are things that I use regularly. While some of the features might actually be buried somewhere and I just didn't find them, it looked like the learning curve for my needs would be rather steep. Most people quite probably would find it "as good as Word" for the uses they might have for Word.

Now that Microsoft has turned Word (2007 & later) into a kiddie toy, I probably will take another look at OpenOffice and/or LibreOffice if/when I'm forced to retire the present main machine.

I've found that Adobe has also made Photoshop Elements into a pinball machine emulation. The version I've been using has begun running into compatibility problems with Vista, and would be questionable on any later Windows, so IrfanView begins to look better every time my old PSE staggers.

The newer release of PS Elements that I bought to see if it would solve the compatibility issues is now on her machine, since her needs are a little less tech than mine and she uses it less often; but she doesn't much care for the changes either. Giving it to her didn't solve my problem, since she can't figure out how to get it to do what she used to do easily with older versions, so I end up having to try to figure it out anyway - and trying to explain it to her if I can find the answers. Less frequent (but much more intense?) involvement.

John