Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor-Wrapping Up – part 2

Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor-Wrapping Up – part 2

More on my wrap up of Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor Excel is a tool I regularly use, especially since I oversee our church”™s finances.  The ability to quickly create charts and graphs in Word and extensively manipulate them to fit your desired look and express your information as you desire is easy.  Word has vastly improved the styles of their charts and graphs, adding more 3D effects and sharper colors and backgrounds.  Numbers is the Mac version, and it simply produces a better-looking product than does Excel and is very easy to use.  I”™m no Excel power user, but what I do with it was not as easy to accomplish in the OpenOffice platform. Let me say a word about PowerPoint.  I used to despise PowerPoint.  They have the WORST looking templates.  Another area Microsoft just simply does not do well in ““ really professional, modern, crisp, clean, sharp presentations.  PowerPoint 07 is a great improvement over previous versions.  I do a PPT presentation almost every week that I teach my mid-week class.  OpenOffice is a joke.  I also extensively tried out the free (and the paid versions) of Sliderocket.  Sliderocket has some real potential, but was so buggy that it created some major headaches for me.  I also called their customer support for help because once it was out of beta, I couldn”™t seem to get anyone to respond via e-mail.  The guy was awesome on the phone and assured me that someone would follow up with my problems ““ I have yet to hear from them.  While it still irks me that PowerPoint is so...
Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor – Wrap-up – part 1

Cheap Technology and the Ordinary Pastor – Wrap-up – part 1

I”™m going to wrap up (belatedly) my little series on pastoral ministry and the quest for inexpensive technology.  Honestly, this is not really an issue for some pastors (or others).  Some are in the position where expense is not really an issue.  Or they are willing to forgo something else in order to have the better technology.  After evaluating the free side of life, I think it is worth spending some money in order to have the better technology and thus a more productive time accomplishing what you do and yet there are a few apps. Let me start with productivity suites. Word Processing, Number Crunching and Presentations.  Hands down, MS Office:  Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are your best bets (all of these in the world of PC).  For a basic suite, of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote (more on this one later), you”™ll pay about $150.00.  If you are a student, you can get the Ultimate Office suite for about $60.00.  That”™s really the way to go for the power and ease of use you will gain over the zero-priced material like OpenOffice.org. Why pay the money for these? Word is the universal powerhouse of word processing.  Other programs, including WordPerfect and Pages with the Mac, have to adjust to it.  It is the standard platform. Office has become much more user friendly.  Though it did take me awhile to adjust to the new ribbon format, the UI is much cleaner, easier to use, faster to navigate, and even pleasing to the eyes.  As said before, OpenOffice reminds me of Windows 98. In Word (Excel, PowerPoint) you can...