A few years ago, there were three leading contenders in presentation software. WordPerfect had Presentations, Software Publishers Corporation had Harvard Graphics and Microsoft had PowerPoint. Somehow Microsoft has taken the lead and PowerPoint is now the major Presentation software program in use today. But there is starting to be a shift away from Microsoft's products in view of the recent legal problems they have found themselves in. One company to step into the void is Vizacom, the parent company of Software Publishing Corporation. They have just brought out a new product called Harvard Graphics Easy Presentations. With this product, Vizacom is hoping to grab computer users in the non- professional and small business arena.

To start out with, you don't need a powerhouse of a computer to run Easy Presentations. You will only need a 486 PC with 8MB of RAM. The program will use a minimal amount of hard drive space. It will only take up about 38 MB. You will need to have a CD-ROM drive and a mouse or other type of pointing device.

The program has you create a series of slides that can be shown on a computer monitor, printed on paper as handouts or printed on transparencies for an overhead projector. If you are going to be using the presentation on a computer, the program allows for the creation of a slide show made from the material.

There are fifteen different types of slides that you can create in Easy Presentations. Some of the types of slides include Title, Bar Chart, Pie Chart, Horizontal Bar and Organization.

The program lets you open an existing presentation, start one from scratch or modify one of the many examples from the Quick Presentations list. Tying these together is the Advisor. This is a step-by-step guide to help you put out a great looking presentation. There are three different areas that the Advisor covers. The first is Check Design. This part will analyze your presentation and provide tips to make it better. You can make the changes that are suggested or ignore them and move on. The Quick Tips area of the Advisor gives you some fast, easy changes to make in the presentation. And the Design Tips portion takes you through various steps to complete a professional looking presentation.

Use the Outliner to organize and plan your presentation. In the Outliner, you can edit bullets, text and title charts easily. To work in the Outliner simply click on its icon in the toolbar.

To put out a slide that has a chart on it, you will need some data to plug into a table. You can input data yourself or import it from Lotus 123 or Excel. Depending on the type of chart, there are some neat special effects that will dress it up. Do an exploding pie chart or maybe a 3-D one.

When making a text slide add effects like a drop shadow. You can also paste text from Microsoft Word or another word processor. You can place your text in a circular pattern for some exciting visual effects.

The program comes with over 15,000 pieces of clip art. Just click on the clip art icon in the toolbar or from the graphics pull-down menu. You can also import clip art from a variety of graphic formats including Gif's and Kodak PhotoCD.

After you have completed all of the slides for your presentation, the decision must be made on the output. You can save the presentation and do a screen show at a later time. You can also print the slides. When printing the slide, do it as slides, speaker notes or handouts.

Harvard Graphics Easy Presentations has a list price of $ 69.95. It can be found at most software retailers.

For an easy to use presentation program that puts forth professional looking output without a lot of expense, Harvard Graphics Easy Presentations will be hard to beat. It has a lot of the elements of PowerPoint without having to pay the high Microsoft prices.

For more information on this or other Harvard Graphics products, visit their web site at www.harvardgraphics.com. You also might want to visit the Vizacom web site to find out what they have in mind for the future. The Vizacom web site can be found at www.vizacom.com.

Copyright © 2000 Bruce E. Von Stiers