Hands On: Travels with PowerPoint

July 1, 2002 (Computerworld) Just a couple of years ago, taking a PowerPoint presentation on the road was a real drag. In addition to your 7-lb. laptop computer, you also needed to carry along a heavy (6 to 10 lb.), bulky and fragile projector if your audience was going to be bigger than a couple of people.
Today, your load can be significantly lighter. There are now numerous laptops available in the 3- to 4-lb. range. And for a real help in packing, there's now a tiny, 2-lb. projector from Plus Vision Corporation of America in Beaverton, Ore., that's incredibly good.
But for the utmost in lightening your load, a new accessory called Presenter-to-Go from Margi Systems Inc. in Fremont, Calif., lets you feed your PowerPoint presentation to that 2-lb. projector directly from a Palm or Pocket PC handheld device.
A Lighter Light
A year and a half ago, Computerworld gave high marks to Compaq Computer Corp.'s then-new iPaq projector \. At just under 3 lb., it was the lightest available projector at the time. The V-807 model from Plus Vision isn't quite as good a performer, but it is designed to project a lower-resolution, less-bright image. It also makes some compromises in order to achieve the smallest possible size and weight and to keep its list price down to $2,495. (It's readily available for $2,295.)

V-807 Plus Vision Corporation of America $2,295

When you look at the little silver box sitting there, just 5.6 in. by 7 in. and under 2 in. high, it's hard to believe that this is a serious tool, because it makes every other projector on the market look gargantuan in comparison. And to round out the package, the V-807 comes in a compact carrying case that accommodates the projector and its cables.
As with the majority of new projectors, the Plus Vision V-807 is built around Texas Instruments Inc.'s digital light-processing chip, in this case in an SVGA resolution (800 by 600 pixels). It uses a compact, high-intensity lamp for a brightness rating of 800 lumens - on the low side, but certainly acceptable for many, if not most, uses.
On the downside, the lens has no zoom capabilities, so the only way to adjust the projected image size is by moving the device closer to or farther from the screen. This projector is at its best in a relatively small room, but keep in mind that the V-807 has to be at least four feet away from the screen or wall. Get closer than that, and you lose focus.

	Presenter-to-Go Margi Systems Inc. $199

The V-807 has digital controls for correcting image keystoning in both horizontal and vertical directions, and these work quite well. There's a digital zoom, which lets you enlarge part of the image up to 10 times, but at that point, it gets pretty fuzzy.
Finally, although the V-807 has only SVGA output, it will accept XGA input (1,024 by 768 pixels) and convert it; I saw no artifacts from this conversion process while using the device.
The lamp, rated for 1,000 hours of use, is contained in a cartridge for relatively simple changing, but you do need a screwdriver. In addition, the projector keeps track of how long the bulb has been burning, so you can anticipate when you are likely to need a replacement.
That much light in a small package generates a fair amount of heat, but it's well dispersed by the fan and didn't build up too much. In addition, in a small room, for which the projector seems designed, the fan noise is clearly audible, though I wouldn't call it objectionable. The power switch turns the lamp on and off, but the fan runs whenever the projector is plugged in.
All in all, this is quite a remarkable projector.
Handheld Slide Show
The second half of the lightweight roadshow package is Margi Systems' $199 Presenter-to-Go, which lets you leave your laptop at home and run the show from your Pocket PC- or Palm OS-based handheld device.
The package includes either a compact flash or PC Card for Pocket PCs, a Springboard module for Handspring's Visor, or a secure digital card for Palm handhelds, each of which fits into the expansion slot of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and connects to a cable that plugs into a normal monitor or a projector's standard VGA input. Margi Mirror software compresses a PowerPoint presentation and loads it from your PC to your PDA.
When you run the presentation from the handheld, you can see your speaker's notes on the handheld while projecting the regular slide. Also, you can run a color slide show from a monochrome PDA - how's that for versatility! And while you can't create PowerPoint presentations per se on your handheld, you can still create and show presentations based on Word or Excel documents by "printing" them to a special driver. Presenter-to-Go outputs XGA graphics, making it a perfect match for the V-807.
What's the catch? Surprisingly, there is little evidence of a downside to Presenter-to-Go. It doesn't support PowerPoint animations, transitions or sound; it's limited in its ability to show "build" slides; and you're restricted to the memory capacity of your PDA. But for most presentations, this is a delightful way to go. Indeed, it's one of the more remarkable products I've seen in the past year.