"Death by PowerPoint". Sound familiar?
What a nightmare.
Worse still is the times when you've got to give a presentation yourself and you watch everyone troop in, already resigned to be bored to tears; eyes already starting to glaze.

Then along comes www.survivingmeetings.com (great name!) with a product called Oxford PaperShow.

With one simple, effective device you really can take your imagination and bring those presentations to life. In fact, when testing it here at TTB what I found was that everyone wanted to have a go - a great way to get everyone interested in your presentation.

Simple, I said? Try this:-

• • Turn on your laptop
• • Shove a Bluetooth stick into one of the USB ports.
• • Wait 20 seconds for it to load.
• • Pull out a pen and a pad of paper and start writing - all over your own PowerPoint presentation - in various colours, with various thicknesses and an eraser to scrub it all out if it goes wrong.
• • Or bring up a blank screen. Bored of white? Make it like a blackboard or a blue board and scribble all over that with bright vibrant colours.
• • Have sound effects when you change colours or erase notes, if you wish.
• • Load up your own Logo, background and on and on the options go.

Then at the end of it all, rather than having the laborious task of printing it all out, your freehand notes included, just click and send to everyone by email. Your documentation can either be sent as in PowerPoint format or converted to PDF - genius!

Where's Alex?

Is it really that simple?

Yes.

Is it really that good?

Yes... Almost.

The functionality of the device is 90% superb - unless you write or draw very fast. After scribbling across about 5 different sheets of paper the only time the system faltered was when I tried to sketch. Then it would take a moment to catch up, missing the first pen strokes in the process. However having said that this is NOT a sketch tool but primarily designed for presentations so bite me for the niggle.

My big gripe however is that the instructions are diabolical for a device of this calibre. Please grab a Focus Group and hand them the device and find out what needs to be popped into the instructions, please! As simple as it is to set up and run the device some of the finer points that would ensure you maximise its benefits are non-existent. That said, an evening playing with it and you’ll get there in the end.

It is not a cheap tool for presentations but if getting your idea across is worth money then I would offer it's a very worthwhile investment and hopefully for the rest of us that have to sit through "death by PowerPoint" it will take off and change the tedium of meetings nationally.

RRPL £117.49 - See www.survivingmeetings.com for details