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Presentation
Cards for Your PDA: Palm OS and Pocket PC
by Tong
Zhang, Senior Editor
Margi
Presenter-to-Go CompactFlash Card (type I) for Pocket PC
Margi Presenter-to-Go SD Card for Palm
Margi Presenter-to-Go Memory Stick Card for
Sony Clié
MARGI’s Presenter-to-Go
is one of the earliest and most popular presentation tools
for the PDA market. Its support for a wide variety of handheld
devices including Palm OS, Pocket PC and HPC devices and flexible
media formats which include CF card, PC card, SD card, Springboard
and Memory Stick makes this a solution for just about every
current PDA. We tested the CF type I card solution for Pocket
PCs with type I/II CF slots and Memory Stick solution for Sony
Clie devices.
The CDROM will auto start the installation
process when you pop it in your computer. Follow the installation
steps to install Presenter-to-Go and Mirror applications
on your PDA. On the Pocket PC, You will see both application
icons appear on your screen after a successful installation
as well as a Tutorial. After you install the software, you
can connect the CF Card to the VGA adapter cable, plug the
CF Card into your Pocket PC and connect the VGA output to
your projector or computer monitor.
On the Clie, you will see presenter.prc and
Mirror.prc along with Palm_Tutorial.pdb files that you can
run to install these applications on your Clie. After software
installation, plug the Memory Stick into your Clie and connect
the VGA output to your projector or computer monitor. There
is also an A/C port on the VGA output adapter of the Memory
Stick version.
The Presenter-to-Go desktop software
is embedded in MS PowerPoint. You will see a shortcut icon
in PowerPoint’s toolbar. You can click on this icon
to bring up Presenter-to-Go Desktop app for converting
and transferring the PowerPoint presentation files to the
handheld device. In this application, you will see a list
of presentations ready for transfer, and an option to transfer
the file to a storage card. You can also view the slides
in selected presentation or delete a presentation that
you don’t want to transfer to the handheld. Once
you have modified all the settings, click on the Transfer
button to move your presentations to your Palm or Pocket
PC. If you don’t have MARGI Presenter-to-Go and Mirror
installed on your handheld, you can install the apps from
this Presenter-to-Go desktop interface.
One unique feature in Presenter-to-Go is the
ability to create a single presentation from multiple sources
including MS Word, Excel and HTML files. Once the Presenter-to-Go
creation software drivers are installed on your desktop,
you will find that you now have a “Presenter-to-Go” printer
listed in your Windows applications. By selecting this as
your printer, you’ll really be outputting the file
to Presenter-to-Go for use on your PDA. You can use the Append
function in Presenter-to-Go desktop version to insert any
pages including MS Word doc, Excel sheet and HTML files into
your presentation. This feature makes combining your product
sheets, marketing tools and other info with your PowerPoint
slides extremely easy.
On the PDA, Presenter-to-Go displays your presentation
slides in a list format. Once you select a presentation,
you will see all the slides in that presentation listed in
the main display window with slide numbers and titles.
On the Pocket PC, you will find shortcut icons
for Preview and View Notes at the bottom of the main viewing
screen. There is also a Card icon here indicating if your
CF card or PC card is detected. There are menus labeled Presentation
and Options. The Presentation menu allows you to start Auto
Slide Show, Show all and Hide all sides, delete current presentation
as well as send current presentation to any handheld via
Infrared. The Options menu gives you access to Preferences,
which includes settings for the number of seconds to display
each slide in the Auto Slide Show mode, Loop Continuously,
and Preview Left Hand Mode to rotate the slides.
On the Clie application, you will find two
shortcut buttons at the bottom of the main viewing screen
for Memory Stick detection and Preview. If you hit the Preview
button, you will see your slides in slide show mode and shortcut
buttons for switching back to list/notes mode and two drawing
tool buttons that you can use to modify the pen colors and
select from two pen widths. When you click on the Palm OS
menu button on the silk screen, you will find Tools, Show
and Options menus. Under the Tools menu, you can copy or
move the current presentation to the memory card, delete
the current presentation or beam the presentation. You will
find Hide and Select all slides and Auto Advance slides in
the Show menu. Under the Options menu, you can find settings
for the number of seconds to display each slide in the Auto
Slide Show mode, Loop Continuously, On screen Indicators
and Annotation color and width options. |
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Presenter-to-Go supports most VGA projectors
and CRT monitors, but does not support TV monitors. The cable connector
is VGA only. Compared to the newer handheld presentation tools
such as IA Presenter, Presenter-to-Go offers fewer features once
the presentation is on your handheld. For example, you can uncheck
any slides in your presentation and have them not show up in the
Auto Slide Show, but you cannot delete that slide or add slides
from other presentations on the handheld. You will need to finish
this process on the desktop. You can however change the order of
the slides by using the drag and drop feature and take any slide
and place it anywhere in the presentation. If you have perfect
canned presentation files ready to go, Presenter-to-Go does have
all the basic features you will need to do a good presentation.
You have the freedom to view notes without showing them on the
big screen during the slide show and draw or write on your slides
anytime in your presentation. You can also switch presentations
with the selector on top of the screen, and manage your presentation
files on memory cards with tools provided with Presenter-to-Go.
It handles large presentations well, including our 79 page test
PowerPoint presentation.
If you don’t use the Auto Slide Show feature,
you can control the slides with the directional buttons on your
PDA or with the 14-key remote control that comes with the package.
The IR remote control lets you move the slides forward or in reverse,
auto loop the slides and gives you the ability to jump to any slide
by punching in the slide number. There is also a Return button
that lets you toggle between two slides.
Presenter-to-Go currently does not support transition
effect or audio/video clips created with PowerPoint on the desktop.
Thus you’ll see only straightforward static slides. Margi tells
us that in their future versions, transitions will be supported.
You can send presentations via Infrared to other PDAs
using the Presenter-to-Go on the handheld.
As a bundled application with Presenter-to-Go, MARGI
Mirror program allows you to show the contents of your PDA’s
screen on the big screen. There is a simple but useful interface
in MARGI Mirror. It provides you with options to Enable/Disable video,
Zoom 1x-4x, Update rate of video display and Rotate the screen (on
the Pocket PC only). Once you have the desired settings, simply click
on the Hide button to hide the MARGI Mirror application's screen.
This application is more designed to show product demos for non-multimedia
applications. If you use applications that run at 15 fps or higher
(action games, movies), you will see choppy video.
The output VGA connector only supports CRT monitors
and projectors, but does not support TV monitors (no RCA or S-video
connector). Don’t expect to see your special transition effects
and added audio/video clips in your PowerPoint presentation on
the PDA version. Presenter-to-Go will support this feature in the
future. MARGI Mirror cannot handle high frame rate demos at a smooth
pace.
Supported Devices and Desktop
Palm OS device support includes Handspring Treo 90, most of the Visor models,
Kyocera Smartphone 7135, Palm m125/130, m500/505/515, i705, Tungsten T/W,
Sony Cliés NR70, SJ20/30, T665 and more. Pocket PC device support
includes Casio E125/E200, iPAQ 3100 through 5450 series, Dell Axim X5, HP
Jornada, NEC MobilePro P300, Toshiba e550/e570 and more. For complete list
of handheld devices supported, click here.
Desktop/laptop support includes Windows 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000, XP and NT 4; Mac
OS 8.5 thru 9.2 (for Visor and Palm only). Source presentation format supports
slides created in PowerPoint 97, 2000 and XP for Windows PC and PowerPoint
98, 2001 for Macintosh.
Supported output devices
Any display device with HD-15 (VGA) connector and support for 1024x786 resolution
(This includes most CRT monitors and digital projectors).
Package includes
CF VGA for Pocket PC: Presenter-to-Go CF Card with integrated IR support, CDROM
with desktop and Pocket PC application plus MARGI Mirror app, VGA Adapter
Cable, Male-to-Male VGA Cable (Projector Connection Cable), 14-key Remote
Control, Quickstart Tutorial and a black carrying case.
Memory Stick for Sony Clie: Presenter-to-Go Memory
Stick Card and Cable with power port, A/C Adapter, Remote Control,
CDROM with desktop and Palm application plus MARGI Mirro app, Projector
Connect cable, Quickstart Card and a black carrying case.
Please note that different media format might have
additional accessories such as power adapter. Please check MARGI’s
web site for the more details.
Software bundle
MARGI’s Presenter-to-Go application and MARGI’s Mirror application.
Price: $199 (for CF card, PC card, SD card, Memory
Stick), $99 (Springboard Module). One year warranty.
Other
Presentation Solutions we've Reviewed:
IA
Presenter CF VGA Card
FlyPresenter
CF VGA Card
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