RIM's BlackBerry Presenter makes mobile PowerPoint all too sexy

BlackBerry users tend to fancy themselves true road warriors -- you know, the kinds of road warriors that live and die most days by a four-shot latte and a copy of Office. It's exactly for these types of folks that RIM seems to have designed the new BlackBerry Presenter, a slick little module measuring 86 x 60 x 23mm that connects to your compatible handset wirelessly and lets you beam up a PowerPoint preso via VGA or S-Video connection. As you mesmerize your crowd with the 24 supported animations and 55 transition styles, you can read your notes right from the comfort of your BlackBerry's display, controlling the whole show without a single laptop in sight. The Presenter hits this month online for $199 and follows up in stores in February, and if you're interested, you can start things off by upgrading from your Pearl 8200 or Curve 8300 -- those puppies won't be supported.

[madmax123 Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:05AM]

its a nice and cool compact design i must say !

[Khris Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:42AM]

@madmax123 The question though is will that "cool compact design" actually perform as promised.

[INsano Posted Jan 6th 2010 4:06PM]

@madmax123 What would you do for a Klondike bar?

[Thiels851 Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:09AM]

I like double-shot lattes, but I am an iPhone user. I guess if I double my coffee intake, I can be a BlackBerry user...

[d0mth0ma5 Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:22AM]

@Thiels851 Just don't try a six-shot latte, then you have to become a TwitterPeek user...

[appleboy Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:12AM]

wow VGA is still around ?

[abrli Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:24AM]

@appleboy well sadly if you're in business world d-sub is still the universal standard connector. in fact not just business world, it's EVERYWHERE. it won't make economical sense to go DVI to project, frankly 99% most of the time, some slideshows.

[cc82 Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:34AM]

@appleboy
do you really need dvi / hdmi for showing ppt slides?
Heck, I hook up my thinkpad to my 46" tv to watch movies via vga, the resolution is just fine....

[Chefgon Posted Jan 6th 2010 9:55AM]

Is that a real question? That's what 99% of the world is using for monitors and projectors. Walk into any meeting room in corporate america and the projector hookup is guaranteed to be VGA.

[mikeweezer Posted Jan 6th 2010 1:50PM]

@appleboy

Don't think it will ever go away, as everything has VGA. I think wireless projection will be the only thing to ever replace it.

[tnoy Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:36PM]

@abrli

This is so true. At work, a common question at meetings is "can I borrow your adapter?" and "can I use your laptop to project?" from people that don't have a VGA connector. It made me chuckle when a bunch of us had gotten new MacBook Pros, since no one had an adapter to convert Mini-DisplayPort to anything useful.

Luckily, in one of our meeting rooms, the projector has a clusterfuck of adapters zip-tied to the VGA connector.

Not having a VGA connector on my Macbook Pro has turned into a hassle. Sure VGA is crap, but I've never had a problem not being able to use my Thinkpad for presentations at work.

We're likely to see VGA on anything marketed to business users for several years still.

[zim2411 Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:26AM]

Hooray! Now the presenters can look like they are texting during a meeting! They will fit right in with their audience.

[dark star Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:31AM]

never!!!
the pearl is like the best blackberry i've ever used. extremely compact yet still easy to type with those predictive texts.

[alkaline Posted Jan 6th 2010 9:52AM]

@dark star i used to think the same thing. then i upgraded to a model with a full keyboard and a fancy screen (i got the tour, to be specific) which still fits nicely in my pocket. the perl is long past it's prime.

[AwayBBL Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:34AM]

I hope they come out with a better browser to display true HTML5.

Having a gizmo to display my BB content is all well and good, but with a crappy browser it's kinda lame.

[josher Posted Jan 6th 2010 9:23AM]

@AwayBBL I'm a bit confused re your comment. this device is for ppt what does browsing the internet have to do with this device? i doubt the department responsible for this device has anything to do with the others that are supposedly working on a webkit browser.

I use my bb mainly for email, bbm and sms, so I dont have a use for this device. but this device would be useful for those that do ppt frequently and on the go.

[NewL Posted Jan 6th 2010 8:40AM]

A "preso"? Really? Is this Perez Hilton?

[djjinksy Posted Jan 6th 2010 9:16AM]

don't you mean the Pearl 8100?

[ArhcAngel Posted Jan 6th 2010 9:36AM]

If the 8300 series isn't supported that's gonna be a LOTTA upgrades...
AHHH...I see what RIM did there!

[scyber Posted Jan 6th 2010 9:53AM]

Any device that makes it easier to present power point presentations is evil.

[derspiess Posted Jan 6th 2010 10:16AM]

I don't have a Blackberry, but a device like this is long overdue. Something like this on my old WinMo phone or my new Android phone would have made my job a bit easier.

[alm Posted Jan 6th 2010 12:54PM]

@derspiess Actually, these types of solutions have been our for years, just looks like RIM found one they liked enough to rebrand. There are a lot of dead companies that went down this path. Expecially ones that only focused on only outputing PPTs, instead of all content. Not sure if this one is limited to only PPT, but seems to read this way. Note some of the HTC devces have TV-Out built right into the device for a few years now.

[Luxury Guy Posted Jan 6th 2010 10:51AM]

So lame...
A native solution like VGA out on the Touch Pro 2 or the LG Expo's pico projector that costs the same price as this adapter are far better solutions to mobile "road warrior" powerpoint. And those options are far more versatile in that they let you play movies, project PDFs, browse the web, etc. as well as display Power Point presentations.

[quanser Posted Jan 6th 2010 11:27AM]

This is so 5 years ago... Impatica did this with the Showmate : http://www.impatica.com/products/showmate/index.html

[alm Posted Jan 6th 2010 12:55PM]

Thanks Lusury and quanser, shold have read the rest of the thread before I replied, your hitting my exact points. Impatica, Colorgraphic, Spectec, etc.....

[thegreatskywalker Posted Jan 6th 2010 3:04PM]

i would be more interested in the phone that the presenter is holding ...... which model is it? what features does it have? is it an iphone killer? shall i get one? why did i attend this meeting in the first place..........

[dragonsmith Posted Feb 28th 2010 11:23PM]

This wireless presenter makes mobile PowerPoint all too sexy? From my exprence, this presenter laser pointer seems not well eye-opening, isn't it? Maybe somebody have found another bluetooth presenter usb here:
http://www.espow.com/wholesale-2-4ghz-wireless-presenter-with-usb-1-1-or-usb-2-0-for-receiver.html
I got this one 3 monthes ago and now i can't help crying for it. Don't make a mistake, i just like it so much that it's my style.