I use s5 for all my presentations, and I’ve been giving a lot of them the past couple years. Although I’ve been tempted, I haven’t yet broken down and purchased a presentation remote, because I’m not sure any of them will work with:
- A mac
- arrow keys in a web browser\
So, all you s5-presentation-givin’-standards-nerds out there, if you use a presentation remote, which one do you use, and do you like it?
Comments
3 responses to “S5 and Presentation Remotes”
I’ve settled in on a remote from Interlink Electronics. I use the “Remote Point Global Presenter” It is a bit pricey but just works and works well.
I picked it because it was radio based (so I don’t need line of sight), and the receiver also doubles as a small USB drive to hold the preso as a backup option.
I don’t use S5, but I just tested it on my Mac using the demo preso with Safari and it worked. (it shows up as a keyboard and the fwd/back buttons default to the left/right arrow keys).
The downsides: there isn’t a power switch, so I take one of the batteries out when I throw it in my bag (it has a small zippered pouch to hold the remote, the USB reciever, and the battery I take out). Also, on my old Powerbook (G3), the USB port can’t give enough power to use the USB Drive feature (but the remote works fine). This isn’t a problem on my Mac Mini or my Dell laptop, and probably not on a modern [Power|Mac]book.
I use a Kensington Pocket Presenter with my OS X laptop and it works great with S5. In fact, I’ve already hacked my personal copy of S5 to have a “blank screen” feature as a result of using that remote. Basically, any remote that works with Powerpoint or Keynote is very likely to work with S5, because so far as I can tell they all send keyboard commands to the computer, so it’s all good. See the comments on http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2006/05/04/presentation-remotes/ for more recommendations from people on good remotes to use.
(Related note: S5 has now moved to http://s5project.org/ and will hopefully start adding features again.)
Thanks, guys!