"PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience."
I've given hundreds of presentations, talks and briefings over the last few years. In my experience there are two basic types of presenter, those that absolutely need a script (mostimes that script is actually their PowerPoint slides), and those that don't.
I also think that once you've set-off down either route in your presenting 'career', it's very difficult to switch styles at a later time. Whichever of these two camps you naturally fall into the first time you stand up in front of a group of people to present, then the die is cast and you'll present that way for good.
I'm a winger and just love standing up in front of people, I form a rough picture in my mind of what I need / want to say, like milestones, make some simple notes (that I invariably forget I have in my pocket) and then throw myself in at the deep-end without a script and endeavour to join the dots between each milestone in as interesting and as conversational a way I can manage.
Once, giving a keynote to a large audience, I worried myself into writing a script, stood up, falteringly read the first sentence in a very obvious 'Hey, I'm reading this' manner, quickly abandonded the script and reverted back to my natural method and delivered a great talk. I can't do it, the script thing, probably as much as people who deliver great scripted talks cannot deliver 'off the cuff'.
Then there's PowerPoint. I've gone full circle with PowerPoint and, having one day realised that all I was doing was leading a group-reading session, decided that less was more and I now resist temptation to use it as much as I can, and when I do I make sure there are fewer than 5 slides, if possible, and as few words on each slide as possible.
PowerPoint is a great tool as a visual aid, something that pops up to underline a point or to depict graphically something too complex to explain verbally. Beyond that, it should be banned. They should put a limit on the number of slides, 5 or 10, and restrict word-counts per slide. Actually, someone should write a PowerPoint virus that infects presentations and arbitrarily deletes slides containing more than 5 words or reduces the overall number of slides down to 4 or 5.
Just think of the good that would do, imagine the productivity savings across the western world, both in saved preparation and presentation time. You might even think that PowerPoint is the reason Microsoft has gotten so big, their evil sabotage tool is sapping the productivity levels of every bleedin' company on the planet, sucking them dry leaving MS to do all the real business whilst we're all locked away wondering how long before the last slide.
Forget Microsoft's anti-competitive practices, that's all just a front for the real deal. PowerPoint.