PowerPoint alternative: Showdown presentation tool

PowerPoint has long set the standard in presentation software, as it is through the ubiquitous productivity suite to Microsoft Office. Many alternatives have emerged in recent years, however, many of them at prices well below the cost of $ 280 Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business--or even free.

We zeroed out of five of the most interesting online alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint and kept them together to compare features and examine its compatibility. If you're in the market for a new presentation creator, it would be wise to keep your wallet in your Pocket until you've read what we found.

Because Google Docs is probably the name most commonly used in cloud-based office software, let's start there. Free service users can import existing presentations or create new ones from scratch and then access, edit and share from anywhere through a Web browser.

Google Docs is well-known for its excellent sharing and collaboration features, which include simultaneous editing by up to 10 people and sharing with over 200 people. You can publish presentations to a unique URL or embed them in a Web site (included in the LinkedIn profiles). Although you cannot change the presentations on a smartphone, they can be viewed on a mobile operating system that supports HTML.

Export features include PowerPoint, PDF and text formats, although not all features are retained. Presentations created in Google Docs can be up to 10 MB, or about 200 slides in size.

For businesses, Google presentations is part of the service paid Google Apps, including Gmail, Google Calendar and more.

hands-on: Google presentations has a Spartan interface, fairly basic, and you must first select and convert presentations imported from elsewhere. When we imported a PowerPoint presentation, have not been kept the transitions, but everything else seemed to make the move intact.

A fairly limited selection of themes and wallpapers is available for presentations, but the collection of models of Google Docs that compensates somewhat with a variety of user-created options. A nice touch is that when you indicate that you would like to insert a video, Google Docs automatically presents a list of options from YouTube with keywords similar to those of the slide in which you're working on. You can then preview these options by clicking on them.

An interface more rudimentary is a trademark of Google Docs, including its presentation component.Most options on Google Docs feel pretty basic but solid. Google Docs provides no support for transitions, which is too bad, even if you have an option to reveal incrementally text and objects. Audio files are not accepted. We are also not crazy about the fact that, even in fullscreen mode, slide shows, actually don't play full screen; a toolbar remains at the bottom.

price: Free, or $ 50 per user per year as part of Google Apps for business

Languages: Many

licence: Specialty

Import/export: PowerPoint import from, export to PDF and PowerPoint

Unique features:

Good for usedIntegrates sharingWidely and collaboration with other Google Tools, including Picasa and YouTube Mobile viewingSupport for multiple languages

Missing pieces:

Competing bids were more interface nicetiesSupport for audioSupport for transitionsOffline accessMetrics and analytics

Better uses for Google Docs:Frequent travellers and groups working together will appreciate great collaboration features of Google Docs, but its functionality is rather limited. We recommend it for those that don't make heavy use of presentations, and does not need to process functions.

Next page: a presentation tool that doesn't use slides