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Introduction
About NXPowerLite
Download & Installation
Using NXPowerLite
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

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Introduction

PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office programs like Word and Excel allow you to insert all sorts of media files including high resolution pictures, animated clips, and other formats. And you can often copy and paste almost anything within these applications.

The result is that presentations, documents, and spreadsheets gets bloated -- a huge complication if you need to store and share many of these files.

NXPowerLite, the product I am reviewing, optimizes the size of these files without compromising their content or quality -- thus making them easier store and share.

Earlier versions of NXPowerLite worked only with PowerPoint presentations -- this new version 3 also optimizes Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. Read the older reviews for versions 1 and 2 here.

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About NXPowerLite

NXPowerLite is from Neuxpower, a company based in London, UK that has been creating custom applications since 1997. Learn more about these products and download a free trial version of NXPowerLite from their site...

My contact at NXPowerLite for this review was Tommy Powell - thank you, Tommy.

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Download & Installation

Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine and follow the instructions. You'll end up with an NXPowerLite 3 program group in your Windows Start menu (see Figure 1 below).


Figure 1: NXPowerLite Start menu Group

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Using NXPowerLite

The application can be used in three ways:

• It can be launched from within Word, Excel and PowerPoint, by selecting the "Optimize with NXPowerLite" option from the File menu -- NXPowerLite will be ready to optimize the current file
• Simply activate the NXPowerLite icon on your desktop, or in the Windows Start Menu.
• Drag any of the supported file types to the NXPowerLite icon on the Desktop.

The latter two options launch the NXPowerLite program in standalone mode.

Follow these steps to use the application in standalone mode:

1. Go to your Windows Start menu and choose All Programs | NXPowerLite (see Figure 1 above).
   
   
2. This launches the NXPowerLite interface. (see Figure 2)
   
   
   Figure 2: NXPowerLite Interface
   
   
3. To add files for optimization, use either of the buttons as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: Add Files
   
   Add Files opens a new dialog box from where you can select the file(s) that you want to optimize.
   
   Add Folder opens the Add Folder dialog box, as shown in Figure 4.
   
   
   Figure 4: Add Folders
   
   Here you can choose a folder which contains PowerPoint, Excel and Word files, and add them for optimization.
   
   
4. The added files will be listed under the File to Optimize list as shown in Figure 5
   
   
   Figure 5: Files to be optimized
   
   There are other sections in the same dialog box; these are explained below:
   
   
   1. Save optimized files as -- allows the user to save the optimized presentations in a particular folder, this option gets activated after pressing the Optimize button.
   2. Compression Levels has four basic compression values which are normal compression, extra compression, high quality compression and mobile device compression.
   3. Custom Compression when selected activates the Settings button -- clicking this opens a new dialog box as shown in Figure 6 -- here you can tweak more parameters like setting the compression format, image cropping, and resizing options, etc.
      
      
      Figure 6 : Custom Compression Settings
   
   
5. When all the settings are changed as required, click on the large Optimize button which opens the Batch Processing dialog box (see Figure 7).
   
   
   Figure 7: Batch Processing
   
   Here some output options can be set: you can opt to flatten embedded documents, overwrite optimized files if they already exist, save optimized files in a location, etc.
   
   
6. Depending upon the settings, the application will compress the files and shows the results in next window (see Figure 8). In this window you can see original size, optimized size, and reduction percentage of the files. The other options are for viewing, e-mailing, deleting, etc.
   
   
   Figure 8 : Results
   
   By default, the optimized files will be suffixed with the words "NXPowerLite".

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Pricing and Support

NXPowerLite costs $45.00. Multi-user pricing are available.

Support is through email support, small online FAQ and a user manual.

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Conclusion

NXPowerLite makes it easier for you to control the size of your Microsoft Office documents by compressing the graphics and embedded documents stored within them. Optimized files retain their original format and functionality without losing the quality. Anyone can open and edit these files and no zipping or unzipping is required to share these files.

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