h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm thinking of buying a Netbook because we need a device that we can plug into the screen at our venue(s) to display PowerPoint presentations. The screens mostly (all?) work using one of those blue multi-pin connectors.

Most of our speakers either bring their presentations on a USB stick or email them to us, so the device must have a USB port too.

That is all it needs to do, so I want it to be light weight, but powerful enough to run PowerPoint.
I've got a laptop already, I want something smaller and lighter that I can shove in my handbag. If I could get something the size of a mobile phone I'd be laughing. Maybe I should try a Raspberry Pi. But since I don't have the skillz for that, I thought of a Netbook. Dying technology I know, which is why I want to act pretty fast on this.

Do you need to run Powerpoint? Could you use some cloudy thing like Google Drive Presentation?

Alternatively, maybe you could redesign your handbag?

http://www.dogster.com/files/styles/424_200sc/public/20121012-dogster-big-dog-purse-hero.jpg

It's more that I don't want to have to lug my work PC and my personal PC around througout the Fringe, to be honest, Icy.

Most of the time people have done their own slides, but don't want to use their own laptop for the same reason I don't - it's heavy, and the talk's in a pub.

If you can get them to upload to Google Drive, then you only really need to worry about the projector interface. Not having gone to a pub with the intention of giving a powerpoint presentation, I'm not sure what to suggest.

Hmm... one of the problems is that the pub we use doesn't have a good copy of Powerpoint.

Actually - the cheapest option might be to buy it Powerpoint and always use their PC.... Hmmmmmm.......

B

You don't need Powerpoint, you need a power point player. And they're free.

I use an Eeepc 1001 with Libre office under linux for that sort of thing, but no reason you couldn't use a similar machine with Power point or Libre office under windows.

Running power point or equivalents doesn't take much computer power so long as the designers are not being stupid.
And if the designers are being stupid... I'll be at the as I don't want to sit through their mega-death by power point.

[BB]

(unless you need to edit the presentation at the pub...)

Ben, Santra is probably a good source of advice for this.

My little Aspire netbook (£179 from Argos) runs Powerpoint and has 3 USB slots. It's about 1.5cm thick and less than A4 in size. It's light and the battery lasts, erm, about 3 hours, possibly more, I've never really checked. It was the netbook I took with me round Europe last autumn for internetting, writing and spreadsheets, and it does everything I need.

The only problem I've had with it that it makes a big buzz and freezes if I watch i-player for too long on it - say about an hour and a half. But if I let it rest for a bit, it's fine for hours of i-playering after that. No idea what's going on there. I can run it all day doing other things without that happening.

I would offer to lend it, but I'm quite a long way away and I'd miss it too much.

Mol