I rarely write about hardware issues, but this has become so
prevalent that I find I must take (virtual) pen to (virtual) paper…
How many times do we or a colleague connect a laptop to a
meeting room projector (“Beamer” for some of our European friends…) and are
surprised to find that screen resolution on the projector looks like 5 pixels
by 3 pixels? And the presenter can’t
even FIND some of the commands that would normally appear on the bottom-right
portion of their screen? Or the
“Extended” desktop has been moved somewhere but can’t be found? Or that PowerPoint Slideshow mode does
unexpected things like showing a neutral desktop (instead of the presentation)?
Laptop computer screen resolution has increased faster (much
faster, in many cases) than for projectors.
What appears as a gorgeous, crisp, high-definition screen on your laptop
(especially new Mac laptops) looks muddled, unreadable and truncated on the far
end of the projector. You may be trying
to squeeze a 2880 x 1800 pixel display down to an 800 x 600 projector (and
consider: 800 x 600 projectors are still being sold!).
Here are some cures for Projector Malitia (Projector
Badness):
- Buy your own projector.
While (potentially) expensive, you will have control over your
situation, at least for face-to-face demo meetings. You’ll be able to pre-prepare your laptop
screen resolution and know exactly what will be visible and how to find/work
with the limitations of your specific projector. Consider:
if you are selling software that runs $100K’s for each deal, don’t you
want your software to display as beautifully as possible in a demo
meeting? If you can’t do this, then…
- Test your laptop with the projectors found in a pile of
conferences rooms. Go around your own
organization and practice connecting your laptop to projectors in various
meeting rooms. Note what happens and
generate a plan for the typical environment – and the worst environment. Then go around a second time to test and make
sure your typical and worst-case plans work!
- Now, generate a font-size eye chart. Use PowerPoint, for example, and type a short
sentence or word phrase (no longer than 1 line) into the content portion of the
slide. Choose a fairly large font size
for this line. Then copy and paste it
below your first version and reduce the font by 1-2 points. Repeat several times. Connect to the projector, go into Slide Show
mode, move to the back of the room and see which line you can read comfortably
– that’s your minimum font size for that room/projector combination!
- Next, practice presenting portions of your demos with the
reduced resolution. Connect to a range
of projectors and practice finding commands and screen locations that would
normally be “right there”, but now need to be accessed via scroll bars (so much
more fun when operating in VM’s…).
Contemplate adjusting your laptop screen resolution to find a best fit
or sadly-happy medium.
- Turn off Presenter View in PowerPoint. I can’t tell you how many times I watch
presenters go into Slide Show mode and then cannot get the presentation to
display through the projector – or they “Escape” out of Slide Show mode and
suddenly can’t seem to display their normal, working desktop and only see a “sanitized”
desktop. The more recent versions of
PowerPoint offer a sophisticated (?) “Presenter View” that can be confusing –
and the default, as installed, is to have it “on”. A solution?
Turn it off…! (Go to the Slide
Show tab, uncheck the “Use Presenter View” checkbox). Now Slide Show mode should operate in the
simpler, (hopefully) more predictable manner.
Hope these ideas help – any others to suggest?
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