Presentation gadgets take a load off road warriors

After handling several technology presentations at industry events — where I was forced to haul my heavy laptop through airports so I could hook it into a bulky projector — I decided to look into lightweight alternatives.

After handling several technology presentations at industry events — where I was forced to haul my heavy laptop through airports so I could hook it into a bulky projector — I decided to look into lightweight alternatives.

One small, lightweight option is the BlackBerry Presenter, which should appeal to financial advisers because so many of them carry BlackBerry phones. The device connects wirelessly to several late models of BlackBerry smart phones using Bluetooth.

The Presenter acts as the intermediary between your cell phone and a projector.

In this way, you can run Microsoft PowerPoint presentations stored on your phone, without the need for a laptop.

Before BlackBerry-wielding advisers get too excited, however, they need to know that it won’t work with the popular BlackBerry Curve 8300 series or BlackBerry Pearl Flip series (visit Blackberry.com for a full list of supported phones).

I tested the device and software on a BlackBerry Bold 9700.

It works well and is definitely a weapon that the BlackBerry-centric road warrior and gadget hound will want in his or her arsenal.

There are some considerations to take into account when using it as a presentation tool.

First, setup isn’t as fast as plunking down a laptop and plugging in a serial cable.

You will need to allow a few minutes to plug in the Presenter and establish the Bluetooth link between it and your cell phone.

Also, the Presenter’s power cord is only 51/2 feet, so if you are using someone else’s projector, you will want to call ahead to make sure that you will have an electrical outlet or power strip within reach.

Running presentations was fairly easy during my test, but again, the device has more going for it in terms of being lightweight and convenient than in being speedy.

For example, I ran a test using two different PowerPoint presentations: a simple one that was only 869 kilobytes in size and a more complex one that was seven megabytes, with lots of transition effects.

The small file loaded and played only slightly slower than it would if it had been running on a laptop.

As might have been predicted, the larger file, which had 60 slides, took almost five minutes to load from the cell phone’s memory card. What’s more, clicking from one slide to the next took a few seconds when running the file with transition effects.

In terms of operating system requirements, your phone must be running at least BlackBerry device software version 4.6, and while the Presenter software is a free download, the actual Presenter device costs $199 if bought directly from shopblackberry.com.

A positive for road warriors is that the Presenter is 3.4 inches by 2.4 inches by 0.9 inches, about the size of a deck of playing cards, and weighs just 4.9 ounces.

Here are a few more pertinent specifications to keep in mind.

It is powered through a micro USB connection to an electrical outlet or power strip, has S-Video and VGA ports, supports both NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) and PAL (Phase Alternate Line) video formats and is capable of multiple display resolutions (640 by 480 pixels with VGA, 800 by 600 with SVGA and 1024 by 768 with XGA).

When I read the specs on the BenQ Joybee GP1 Mini Projector, which is the size of a small portable radio, I decided to take a closer look.

At 5.35 inches wide by 2.12 inches thick by 4.72 inches in diameter the device is roughly the size of your typical soft-sided 24 CD/DVD storage case (check out the online version of this story for a photo slide show).

The unit itself weighs just 1.4 pounds, though you will add another eight ounces when you include the power supply and cables.

Here is the trade-off: Unlike its larger, heavier, louder and truly business-class counterparts that use powerful bulbs that project at around 3,000 ANSI lumens, the GP1 uses an LED light source that gives off just 100 lumens.

To put that in meaningful perspective, presentations made using our in-house, full-size projector, a Dell 2400MP, can be easily viewed with the lights on in a conference room.

By comparison, it is difficult to make out anything with the GP1 when the lights are on in the room. It does fine in the dark, though even at its brightest setting, it’s quite a bit dimmer than full-size machines such as the Dell.

I liked the projector’s simple remote but for one significant flaw: Its keys aren’t backlit, which can make things difficult in a darkened conference room.

This is a good, but not a great, projector that is very portable and very quiet (the fan is just a whisper, an improvement over larger, noisier machines).

One other neat GP1 feature to mention is its built-in USB reader.

Although the GP1 can’t run PowerPoint or other applications itself (you need a laptop or smart phone for that), you can convert your presentation slides into individual photo files or a video file and save them to a USB thumb drive.

The reader can play back BMP, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, MPEG-1, and MJPEG.

Similarly sized alternatives to the GP1 include the 3M MPro110, Dell M109S, Epson PowerLite Presenter, and Optoma Pico PK101.

E-mail Davis D. Janowski at [email protected].

For more information visit the Blackerry Presenter page (which includes a list of compatible phones) as well as the BenQ GP1 product page (be sure to scroll down once you get there, otherwise you’ll miss all the interactive media stuff).