ThinkFree Office 3 Premium is a suite of three programs: Write, Calc, and Show. Write is a Word-type application; Calc is fashioned after Excel; and Show is like PowerPoint. (For purposes of this review, I did not assess the features or performance of the Write and Calc programs. This review looks mainly at Show and how it stacks up to PowerPoint and other presentation software.) ThinkFree Office 3 runs on a variety of platforms. You are not limited to Microsoft Windows; you can also use Mac OS and Linux. The total package of all three products is just around $50. This is a highly competitive price. It says on the box; "The affordable, compatible alternative to MS Office for the rest of us."
All three products are very similar to (and use the same file formats as) their equivalent Microsoft products. They are almost identical. If you are familiar with Microsoft Office, the learning curve for ThinkFree is almost nonexistent.
ThinkFree Office 3 Show is the utility that creates presentations. It's most similar to the 2003 version of PowerPoint and creates .ppt files (but not the new .pptx files that PowerPoint 2007 creates). The toolbars are almost identical to PowerPoint 2003, with a toolbar at the top of the screen and a toolbar at the bottom with icons for the same drawing tools as PowerPoint 2003. This makes it very easy to insert text or a picture. You simply click on the icon at bottom of the screen in the drawing tools. If you then want to format the box (for instance, with a border or a fill color), there is an icon to do this.
Considering ThinkFree Office 3 Show would cost about $17 if it could be bought separately, I wouldn’t expect anything approaching the functionality found in PowerPoint, but I was impressed by how much you could do with ThinkFree 3 Show. However, there are definite limitations. For the purposes of this review, I am comparing ThinkFree 3 Show to the PowerPoint 2003, which it most closely resembles. The 2007 version of PowerPoint is in a totally different league.
You can select from a variety of themes. You are not immediately prompted to choose a theme. If you want one, you need to click the Format button at the top of the screen, and select Slide Design. There are 33 pre-designed themes to choose from. The theme is applied to the whole file and you cannot apply different themes to different slides.
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You cannot insert a whole picture album into ThinkFree 3 Show, as you can with PowerPoint. You can only insert one picture at a time. ThinkFree 3 Show has a selection of very useful clipart, different from the clipart available from Microsoft, but almost as extensive.
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When creating a presentation, there are many good transitions that you can apply to individual slides or the complete project. ThinkFree 3 Show has about half the number of transitions of PowerPoint 2003. This is also the case with picture animations. I like the way that ThinkFree 3 Show presents you the options to set transitions or animations. The screen appears to the right of the design screen. It is very intuitive.
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[Transition design.jpg]
You cannot add music or sounds to the presentation. This might not be needed by many people, but is a really good effect for certain presentations. Also, there is no rehearsal mode to rehearse timings.
You can create a table in ThinkFree 3 Show and enter your data into the table. However, you cannot create charts of any kind. Notes can be added to the slides. There is no multiple monitor support. The notes will show when printed as a hard copy.
[Notes.jpg]
There is an "Export to iPod" function available, which looks like a great option, though I didn’t try it. However, I can imagine it would be useful to have a version of a presentation on an iPod. Because it is in the .ppt format, your presentation can also be synced to a Pocket PC device, as that format is compatible for such a device.
[Export to IPOD.jpg]
