Presentation versus Report (Score 1)

The only thing "bad" about MS PowerPoint is that making a 20-page presentation becomes SO easy that people, that where as before, complete reports and thorough analysis were created BEFORE they were distilled into presentations, now you have people just slamming things onto PowerPoint as facts are discovered and thoughts cross the mind. No matter what the medium is (transparency projected onto walls, sleek PowerPoint with all sorts of bells and whistles), a sloppy presentation is just that -- waste of audience's time.

I've been creating more than my fair share of PowerPoint slides in my 8 years as an IT/management consultant, and I've heard and tried probably all the rules and best practices on PowerPoint. What's important at the end, I believe, is that the PowerPoint captures the true "take aways" from whatever point you want to get across in a concise and logical package, and that the details should always be provided in a separate artifact, usually a well-written report that provides details to the "take aways." Executives will appreciate the take aways, and their underlings will be happy to that they have something to troll through.

Badly developed, and poorly delivered PowerPoints defintely are deterrents, but it's how you use the tool, not the tool itself, that is to blame.