Impatica

Impatica's technical support seems quite efficient - I received prompt replies to all my queries.

The website also has an excellent FAQ, as also various technical support options.

When you think of what happens next with Impatica, you cannot but help delve into its compatibilities with the new abilities Microsoft introduced in PowerPoint 2002. For those of you who would like to know more about PowerPoint 2002, do take a look at an overview available elsewhere on this site:

PowerPoint 2002 / XP

Since then, PowerPoint 2003 has been released and Impatica also released an update compatible with both the versions.

The status as of now is that Impatica has already confirmed basic compatibility with PowerPoint 2002 - content developed using PowerPoint 2002 should translate and play properly provided that it uses only the currently supported feature set. Its good to know that work is already underway on Impatica for PowerPoint 2002 that will support many of the new features of PowerPoint 2002.

So, how much does Impatica cost - that's an important question.

The software is offered as a perpetual user license with no additional charge for distribution of the content.  Single user copies list at US$499, with volume discounts starting at 10% for quantity two and increasing from there.

Unlimited use Enterprise licenses are available and are negotiated on a case-by-case basis, depending on the size of the enterprise.

Education discounts are available for Colleges, Universities, and Public Schools.

Impatica's greatest advantage is its ability to play successfully over modem connection speeds as low as 28.8 kbps. It's other assets include its total independence from the need to have an installation of PowerPoint on the same system - as well as its complete ease of use.

When the time to pass judgement over Impatica comes - its more of discerning a sense over the final medium in which your presentation has to be distributed. The choices include standalone EXE files, Shockwave Flash, Java, streaming video and DHTML - Impatica uses the Java route - its advantages include the ability to play without plugins even in ancient version 3 browsers, and that's something other delivery options cannot match upto. It also has a convenient contain-within-email feature, which is a neat implementation. Impatica also uploads your presentations onto a server, without the need for another FTP application. Impatica's trump card is its completeness - considering the fact that you don't even need PowerPoint installed on the same machine - and you can just drop a dozen PowerPoint presentations over the Impatica desktop icon and have some coffee. Come back and all your presentations are ready-to-use web presentations, ready to be uploaded to a server and sent through email to many recipients.

I am sure there are a lot of people there who find Impatica a great solution for web presentations. Through various updates, Impatica has matured to become a very attractive proposition if you need to distribute presentations online.

Meanwhile, do view this Impatica presentation - and do visit the Impatica web site for more information.

Sample Presentation (this 2 MB presentation was converted by impatica to a more manageable 178 KB!)

Since this review was written, Impatica has launched a Mac version - the Windows versions also creates Blackberry compatible presentations.