Just curious, what type of software do the contributors to the forum prefer for for their own use in preparation of railroad related electronic programs and presentations? Are you using Microsoft PowerPoint, which is common in the business and academic communities, or ProShow Gold, which is used in most of the railroad enthusiast photo shows? Or perhaps something else?

Having previously used Powerpoint in the business world, that would be my choice. As I own a copy of the software, I doubt I would be inclined to purchase Power Show Gold unless some meaningingful advantage could be explained or demonstrated.

One of the differences I am aware of is that a PSG presentation can be compiled as a executable file. The result is that the presentation can be run on a computer that does not have the source code of the actual program. I am guessing here-but the size of the file would probably entail the use of an external hard drive rather than CD's.

The Pro Show Gold website:

http://www.photodex.com/products/proshowgold

Microsoft Powerpoint has a free viewer too.

If you have a folder of pictures in picture mode in Windows XP, you can view them as a slide show too.

Say it isn't so! Bill Gates giving something away? If he is feeling big hearted, how about giving the XP a way to read and respond to Word so college students can converse with their professors without laying out close to 300 bucks for Office?

Later!
Mr. Ed

Wordpad will read and write Word documents if they have limited formatting. The problem is getting everyone to abstain from fancy formatting.

There is also a Word document viewer, but few use it, since Office is licensed to all of our students as part of a university site purchase.

The student version of Microsoft Office, which includes Word, PowerPoint, and the Excel spreadsheet software, is only about $150 and has been at that price for years.

So are the railroad enthusiast groups that are using ProShow adopting a standard that is not supported in the preservation and academic world?

I believe that non-profit groups can purchase the entire MS suite of four programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access) at a substantial discount that is comparable to the student discount.

Many "corporate types" (especially those who travel on business) are issued laptops with MS office installed.

I am a computer professional of many years and when I first heard about this "Proshow Gold" I new nothing about it and laughed a little. However, I did quickly look at the product's website and it seems to be a well developed and supported product for the very narrow purpose of electronic slide show presentations using high definition images.

One issue that comes to mind, is that railfan shows are likely to be large collections of large file size images. PowerPoint is not going to be a strong choice for presentations with a large photo file on every slide. The ppt file size would be huge, and I have my doubts about the speed and reliability of PowerPoint in that case.

Powerpoint is strongest for animated text presentations with simple, low density images (most images you see online are "low density"), which are typical business presentations.

Yes, PowerPoint definitely does have a size limit, it seems to vary with the capability of the computer being used for showing the file. I have seen PowerPoint programs up to 120 Megs with as many as 20 music tracks (linked, not embedded) that seem to play well on a reasonally capable computer. Fortunately PowerPoint generally binds up on editing before it encounters problems with playback, so it gives you plenty of warning when the file is getting too large.

With image reduction to "screen" resolution I have seen PowerPoint handle a program with as many as 600 full screen images.

Of course when you are considering resolution, the program is only a part of the total picture. The capability of the projector is a major factor too. Then in music synchronized auto-run programs there is also the question of just how much resolution you can appreciate when you have an average viewing time per slide of five to eight seconds.

Has anyone pushed ProShow to its limits to see where it crashes and what happens?

You may want to try OpenOffice. It is an open source alternative that reads and writes Word, Excel, and Power Point files. Supposedly, the interface is very similar to Office. You can get more information at:

http://www.openoffice.org

I use it to read and print the Power Point files created by my law professors.

Have a safe and joyous day!
Gary Drag