Free Alternative to MS Power Point?

Gigazombie Cybermage

I have to give a power point presentation (along with a 4 page paper) for Speech class, but I'm poor. Are there any free alternatives to power point that can be recognized by the real deal? It's bad enough I have no clue how to make a power point presentation, geez...

kime

OpenOffice or LibreOffice are open source alternatives to Microsoft Office, including something for making presentations which you can save as a .ppt file.

Don't do anything too fancy with it, as the formatting is not always universally the same between them.

You may also consider, after making the presentation, to simply save it as a PDF where each slide is a page (it should be pretty easy to do that), so you won't have to worry about formatting issues.

Addendum: I have grown to like Microsoft Office a lot more than the free alternatives, so I'd encourage you to try and get a copy at a student discount or something.

Artereis

Employers can have discount programs through companies like Microsoft as well. For example, I can purchase Office for $10. You might want to look into that.

Essee

I've been able to use OpenOffice (and now LibreOffice) for Powerpoints, etc. for classes for years now. I greatly prefer the UI for their whole suite, so I've almost never used Microsoft's Office/Powerpoint programs. (Before OpenOffice, I always used WordPerfect because I hated Office. I switched off of WordPerfect several years ago because OpenOffice/LibreOffice work better for me as well.)

Edit: Just try to make sure you save things in Microsoft's formats (*.ppt, *.doc using the Office 2000-something option) because I wouldn't count on any of Microsoft's products happily opening anything in an open format. Because they want you to use their own products.

bowen

I believe google docs has a version of powerpoint.

I think it can even export to ppt.

Worth looking into.

bowen

http://www.google.com/drive/start/apps.html#product=slides

If you've already got a google account then you have 0 things to download which makes this a bit better. I hate libre/open office something fierce.

Darkewolfe

Assuming you're a university student, you probably want to go to the computer lab and use actual powerpoint there if you're going to be graded on formatting at all.

Lord Palington

Seconding Bowen - Google Present is pretty rad, they even have a new feature where you can search for images inside the program, then insert them into the presentation.

The number of 'themes' is a little limited, but all in all, it's a pretty solid program.

Gigazombie Cybermage

One of those should be sufficient. I appreciate it guys.

Kambing

http://prezi.com/

jclast

It sounds like this is for a college course. Most campuses have student labs with MS Office installed - then you'd know for certain that your presentation met the instructor's guidelines (if there are any specific to your presentation format).

Athenor

Also, if you are willing to put up with bugs but really, REALLY need a true powerpoint program, the Consumer Preview of Office 2013 is out and free until the general release version comes out. A coworker's been using Outlook 2013 for a couple months now. Just save it in a backwards compatable mode.

MichaelLC

bowen wrote: »

http://www.google.com/drive/start/apps.html#product=slides

If you've already got a google account then you have 0 things to download which makes this a bit better. I hate libre/open office something fierce.

I'm curious to know why the hate for OO? I guess OO was/is pretty bad, but I'm digging Libre.

kime

MichaelLC wrote: »

bowen wrote: »

http://www.google.com/drive/start/apps.html#product=slides

If you've already got a google account then you have 0 things to download which makes this a bit better. I hate libre/open office something fierce.

I'm curious to know why the hate for OO? I guess OO was/is pretty bad, but I'm digging Libre.

I've only used LibreOffice briefly, but it didn't strike me as much different that OO. And while initially I thought OO was pretty cool (open source yayy), it just never seemed as pleasant or robust to use as Microsoft Office.

Maybe LO is worth trying again?

bowen

Java :rotate: mostly.

And it's slow as beans, at least at launch. Sometimes it takes me a good 5 minutes to get into it and start working.

schuss

Also note that the student license price for office is something dumb like 65 bucks, and well worth the money.

MichaelLC

bowen wrote: »

Java :rotate: mostly.

And it's slow as beans, at least at launch. Sometimes it takes me a good 5 minutes to get into it and start working.

Yeah, Java. That's some crazy load times. 5 seconds for me on an i5 Win7 laptop from last year.

Not saying LO is better than Office - the FREE part gives it major points for me - but find it competent enough.

schuss wrote: »

Also note that the student license price for office is something dumb like 65 bucks, and well worth the money.

Of course if you have that option, I'd totally go for it.