More on my wrap up of Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor
Excel is a tool I regularly use, especially since I oversee our church”™s finances. The ability to quickly create charts and graphs in Word and extensively manipulate them to fit your desired look and express your information as you desire is easy. Word has vastly improved the styles of their charts and graphs, adding more 3D effects and sharper colors and backgrounds. Numbers is the Mac version, and it simply produces a better-looking product than does Excel and is very easy to use. I”™m no Excel power user, but what I do with it was not as easy to accomplish in the OpenOffice platform.
Let me say a word about PowerPoint. I used to despise PowerPoint. They have the WORST looking templates. Another area Microsoft just simply does not do well in ““ really professional, modern, crisp, clean, sharp presentations. PowerPoint 07 is a great improvement over previous versions. I do a PPT presentation almost every week that I teach my mid-week class. OpenOffice is a joke. I also extensively tried out the free (and the paid versions) of Sliderocket. Sliderocket has some real potential, but was so buggy that it created some major headaches for me. I also called their customer support for help because once it was out of beta, I couldn”™t seem to get anyone to respond via e-mail. The guy was awesome on the phone and assured me that someone would follow up with my problems ““ I have yet to hear from them. While it still irks me that PowerPoint is so stingy with the sorts of media it will allow you to embed (I”™ve had to find some free mp3 and flv converters), my headaches were not nearly as strong as when I tried to use another presentation program. I don”™t hate PowerPoint like I used to. In fact, I”™ve become much more adept at using it.
Another place for my conversion to the free stuff has occurred (and I don”™t think I”™ll return) is in the arena of e-mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks. As I”™ve said before, I was previously an Outlook fanatic. Those who know me well, know that I had so customized Outlook and had a few critical add-ons, that it was a virtual part of my being. No more. In fact, I find my stress level rising any time I fire up Outlook. It is slow to start, slow to search, slow to compose, etc. I am a Google convert here. I won”™t repeat myself on what I”™ve already said about Google calendar and Gmail. I”™ve had no problems switching over. I prefer to use the web app on my iPhone (it is a more realistic Google interface and experience than the native iPhone mail app). I can not only quickly navigate and handle all of my e-mail quickly either on my phone or desktop and it is all seamlessly synchronized. I love Google calendar and can see trying to move our entire office to a Google calendar system. I hesitated because I enjoyed having MS Exchange Server. Google will make Exchange unnecessary-and, once again, Google is free. Tasks are easy to use and have a free web-app on the iPhone that is excellent. Once again, it is better than Outlook and, let me say it again, it is free. Outlook is honestly what starts to bump up the price of Office 07, so leave it out, pay less and enjoy life a little more with Google.
The rest on Monday.
