Free Microsoft PowerPoint Trial, And Its Alternatives
Microsoft PowerPoint is a very popular program. When it comes to making computerized presentations, PowerPoint is the biggest name, and the only one many people think of. But it is very expensive. Some people search the Internet, hoping to get a free PowerPoint download.
PowerPoint is a very powerful and versatile application. People have many different uses for it. People need PowerPoint or a free PowerPoint alternative to create their own presentations, and to view presentations created by others. For people who have an urgent need to download such a program, there are many options.
PowerPoint Viewer 2007
Microsoft has a free viewer for PowerPoint presentations. It doesn’t allow the user to create or edit PowerPoint presentations, but it will display presentations that were created by others.
Downloading a free Microsoft PowerPoint viewer is easy. All it takes is a quick trip to Microsoft’s web site.
Free Microsoft PowerPoint 60 day trial
Microsoft offers a free 60 day trial of Office 2007 Professional. This is a suite of applications that includes Microsoft PowerPoint, as well as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and other productivity applications. Buying the full version of this package of applications can be very expensive. However, for someone who has an immediate and short-term need for Microsoft PowerPoint, this option for a free PowerPoint download is very attractive.
Over a million people have already taken advantage of this free PowerPoint download available on Microsoft’s web site.
OpenOffice.org – A Free PowerPoint alternative
There’s an alternative to Microsoft Office that Microsoft can’t keep secret anymore. It’s called OpenOffice. The number of people who used OpenOffice was once small, but now it is very large indeed. As of September 2007, OpenOffice has reported more than 98 million downloads of their free product.
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OpenOffice, is a free open source alternative to PowerPoint. It seeks to be a competitor to Microsoft Office. Its look and feel resembles Microsoft Office, so for people familiar with Office, it’s easy to learn. It can read and write most of Microsoft Office’s file formats, including files from older versions of Microsoft Office.
The free PowerPoint alternative in OpenOffice is called Impress. Impress can read and write PowerPoint files, and can be used to make PowerPoint-style presentations. It can also export presentations into Adobe Acrobat format, and Flash format. So a presentation from Impress doesn’t need special software. If a computer has a web browser with Flash installed, OpenOffice can make a presentation for it.
There’s more to OpenOffice than just the PowerPoint alternative. OpenOffice has a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database management program, and a vector graphics editor. It’s all free, all open source, and all easy to use.
More information about Impress and the entire OpenOffice package is available at the OpenOffice.org web site.
Google Docs – another Free PowerPoint Alternative
The search engine giant Google has gone well beyond their original mission of searching the web. They have all sorts of useful tools for computing. They have responded to Microsoft’s PowerPoint and OpenOffice’s Impress by creating their own set of tools. Google Docs is a collection of free web-based applications created by Google. The collection includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, and presentation software similar to PowerPoint.
Google Docs has nothing to download, and nothing to install. It works within the web browser. Google Docs supports many web browsers on many operating systems, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Chrome on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Apple OS X. It supports the document formats used by Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It also supports other formats, including OpenOffice, Adobe Acrobat, and HTML, the format of web pages.
Google’s PowerPoint alternative can save your work to your computer, or on the Internet. This makes it easy to work on a presentation with a group, or to work on it from several different locations. Presentations can be restricted to just the author, shared with a few select people, or published to the entire world. Letting someone view a Google Docs document is a simple matter of sending a link. It’s even possible to view a presentation on a smart phone, such as the iPhone.
Using Google Docs is a simple matter of making an account at docs.google.com
Millions of people use PowerPoint without even having heard about the alternatives. For some people, making or viewing a computer presentation means either paying a lot of money for Microsoft Office, or trying to download a free version. Although there is a free trial of PowerPoint, and a free viewer for PowerPoint, there are other choices. Google Docs and OpenOffice’s Impress are both great applications for making PowerPoint-style applications. Nowadays, people who are interested in computerized presentations should look in to all of these options, and choose whichever one suits their needs.