PPTminimizer 3

Introduction
About PPTminimizer 3
Download and Installation
Using PPTminimizer 3
The Enterprise Version
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

In today's media driven age, we are surrounded by audio visual content like pictures, video clips, sounds, etc. And yes, we all like to insert them into our Powerpoint presentations, resulting in huge file sizes. Products like PPTminimizer provide a solution to this problem -- and I have reviewed this product in the past.

PPTminimizer's new version 3 is a much improved version that has been just launched.

About PPTminimizer 3

PPTminimizer is from Balesio, a German company that also creates several other products such as TurboDemo. You can download a free trial version of PPTminimizer 3 from their site.

PPtminimizer 3 is a new version of their PowerPoint add-in product that is compatible with PowerPoint 2007 files (.PPTX), and also fully functional within Windows Vista.

New features includes

Possibility of adding and removing presentations from the task list

A search option that allows the user to search more effectively for PowerPoint type files.

My contact at PPTminimizer for this review was Sophia Taoutaou -thank you, Sophia.

Download and Installation

Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine and follow the instructions. You'll end up with an PPTminimizer program group in your Windows Start menu, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: The PPTminimizer Start Menu Group

When you run it for the first time it will ask for your registration details (the serial number) -- alternatively, you can run the product in evaluation mode that allows you to do 12 free optimizations.

Using PPTminimizer 3

PPTminimizer works in two ways:

As an add-in from within PowerPoint (including PowerPoint 2007)

As a standalone product

In addition, PPTMinimizer 3 also includes a Microsoft Outlook add-in that prompts you to optimize any PowerPoint presentations that you are emailing as an attachment.

Also, there's a separate Enterprise version of PPTminimizer available that runs on servers -- I look at this version in more detail later in this review.

When installed, follow these steps to compress a PowerPoint 2007 file using PPTminimizer's standalone version.

1. Go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | PPT minimizer 3.0 | PPTminimizer (see Figure 1 above).
2. This opens the PPTminimizer 3 interface, as shown in Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: PPTminimizer 3 interface
4. The interface is explained below:

A. Toolbar

5. Here you will find options to open, optimize, or search presentations.

B. Presentations to Optimize

6. Shows the list of opened presentation(s), which need to be optimized.

C. Optimized Presentations

7. The optimized presentations can be seen here. To save the optimized presentations in a particular folder, choose the Save optimized presentation in folder option.

D. Custom Compression

8. Activate the check box and click the Settings button, which opens Custom Compression Settings dialog box as shown in Figure 3 -- by tweaking parameters like setting the screen resolution and JPEG quality, you can get the best compression value.
9. 
   Figure 3: Custom Compression Settings

E. Sidebar

10. The tabs at the left side of the interface replicate the options available on the toolbar.
11. The Configuration option opens the Settings dialog box (see Figure 4), where global settings can be altered.
12. 
    Figure 4: Settings

F. Compression Settings

13. Has three basic compression values which are strong compression, standard compression and low compression.
3. To open a presentation, choose the Open Presentations button (see Figure 5).
4. 
   Figure 5: Open a presentation
5. This opens a dialog box from where you can select the presentations that you want to compress.
Note: Multiple presentations can be opened and optimized at one go.
4. The opened presentation(s) will be listed under the Presentations to Optimize list, as shown in Figure 6.
5. 
   Figure 6: Presentations to be optimized
5. When all the settings are tweaked, click on the large Optimize Presentations button (see Figure 7).
6. 
   Figure 7: Optimize presentations
6. Depending upon the settings, the application will compress the presentation(s) and shows the changes in next window as shown in Figure 8.
7. 
   Figure 8: Optimized presentation(s)
8. In this window, you can see old size, new size, and reduction percentage of the presentation. The other options are for viewing, e-mailing and deleting.

The Enterprise Version

PPTminimizer Enterprise version is a server-capable version with the following features:

The Search Assistant option not only searches presentations to be optimized on local drives, but also servers and networks.

The Optimize and Replace functions replace the original presentations with newly optimized copiess, storage space can be attained by replacing unnecessarily large original presentations with new optimized ones.

Pricing and Support

PPTminimizer has two versions:

PPTminimizer 3 costs $29.95 for a single-user license

PPTminimizer Enterprise costs $399.00 for a single Server.

Support is through email and phone, and a small online FAQ.

Conclusion

PPTminimizer is a good investment, and version 3's new improvements make it even more useful.

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