The Proprietory Vs. Open Source Software in Management Education

Open Office Impress Vs. Power Point

Open Office’s Impress guides the user in selecting transition type, transition timing, and indicating a title page etc., when compared with Power Point Presentation which compensated with the pre loaded slide templates.

One positive difference between PowerPoint and Open office Presentation is that Open Office Presentation has  the ability to export a documents as a PDF.

Adding custom animations in Impress is similar to PowerPoint. Many of the same effects are found within each application. While a custom animation can be added to a chart, is not available in Impress.

The Impress window is divided into three parts; the slides pane, workspace and tasks pane. Different views of the workspace can be accessed through the navigation tabs at the top: Normal, Outline, Notes, Handout, Slide Sorter.

Sound files can be added to an Impress presentation but not voice-over narration. Further, inserted sound files can only be played for the selected slide, not the entire show.

PowerPoint and Impress extend the number of templates available through their online repository of presentation background templates.

Impress has greater range of font works compared to Power Point

Impress does not support some of the formatting features that PowerPoint does. It does not support three-color gradients, double and triple borders etc.

Impress changes three-color gradients to two-color, double or triple borders to single and round-dotted borders to square dots.

Voice-over narration is not supported by Impress. There are no settings for multimedia custom animations, such as the ability to play a sound for the next few slides.

Sounds can be added in Impress, however sounds only play for the slide they associated with. Background music for the whole presentation cannot be inserted.

There is no facility in Impress for Chart Effects, as there is in PowerPoint, such as presenting a series or category at a time. On import the charts simply appear.

PowerPoint allows a PowerPoint file to be saved to a CD, or split up over several floppy disks, and assures that all related files are included which does not exist in Impress, nor can Impress open such files.

Impress date fields are exported as text, so they do not automatically update.

PowerPoint provides action settings (jump to slide, run program) for mouse overs. Impress does not have that option except on mouse click.

Impress has custom animations that are equivalent to custom animations in Power Point. Applying animations in Impress is very similar o Power Point Presentations

Fitting text to the frame, or a text box, in the two programs behaves differently. In PowerPoint, the program automatically re sizes the font proportionally as the text exceeds the size of the text box. In Impress, if the option Fit to frame has been selected, the program allows text to be typed outside of the text box.  This often leads to compressed and unattractive text while working with Impress.