For a prefessional screen presentation, you need to have a small gadget in your hands that allows you to switch slides without having to interact with your computer directly (involving moving to the presentation computer and searching and pressing the right keys).
Mika posted his comments on Kensington Wireless Presenter a vew days ago.
Our company got some Logitech Cordless 2.4GHz Presenter which I tested with Windows and OS X.
Hardware
The thing has a nice size, not too small but also not too big. It feels smooth in my hand and every button seems to be at the right place.
http://geizhals.at/img/pix/134295.jpg"
buttons for
- F5/esc (start/end presentation mode)
- blank screen
- previous
- next
- laserpointer
- volume up
- volume down
- timer
- reset
LC-display with
minutes left
percentage bar with 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% of the speaking time left
battery level indicator:
- full battery
- low battery
- replace battery
on/off slider
USB-dongle which can be stored in the presentation tool
built in laser pointer
two standard AAA-batteries
nice textile cover
timer can be programmed in multiples of five minutes and a vibration alarm that goes off five, two and it vibrates twice at zero minutes before end
signal range with fresh batteries: 15 meters or more (our company got no bigger room g)
nice soft/shell for transportation
low power consumption: manual says that the two batteries last six months when used frequently
Windows XP Pro SP2
Just plug in and everything is working.
Volume controls are able to control system sound level.
MS Powerpoint 2007
- f5/esc: starts/ends the presentation mode
- blank screen: blanks/unblanks screen to black
- previous/next: previous/next slide
OpenOffice Impress v2.3
- f5/esc: starts/ends the presentation mode
- blank screen: blanks/unblanks screen to black
- previous/next: previous/next slide
Foxit Reader v2.3
- f5/esc: ends fullscreen mode when pressed twice (to start: Alt-2)
- blank screen: nothing
- previous/next: previous/next page
Adobe Reader v8.1.2
- f5/esc: ends fullscreen mode when pressed (to start: Ctrl-L)
- blank screen: nothing
- previous/next: previous/next page
OS X v10.4.11 PPC
When the USB-dongle is plugged in for the first time, the system tries to identify this new "keyboard": the user is asked to press the left shift key (or similar) and fails because there is no shift key on this device :-)
After a while the user is confronted with a window that suggests three different keyboards where I chose the european ISO one. After that, the device is set up to be used.
Apple Keynote v2.0.2
- f5/esc: does not start presenting mode but ends it when pressed twice
- blank screen: ends presentation mode
- previous/next: previous/next slide
Adobe Reader v7.0.5
- f5/esc: does not start presenting mode (to start: Apple-L) but ends it when pressed twice
- blank screen: does nothing
- previous/next: previous/next page
NeoOffice v2.2.1 Patch 0
- f5/esc: starts/ends the presentation mode
- blank screen: blanks/unblanks screen to black
- previous/next: previous/next slide
GNU/Linux
Sorry, I do not use Linux on a desktop these days, so please follow mikas blog :-)
Conclusio
From my point of view: this device is definitely worth a recommendation :-)
Note: this blog entry was originally authored using Serendipity and converted to Org-mode format for publicvoit via a dumb script. This may result in bad format or even lost content. Please write a comment if you want to get in touch with me so that I can try to fix things.