WOOPS! Help me out again

[Jeff Horton]

I didn't catch it the first time but I left one item off the poll. Here it is corrected.
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I am working on presentation to send on CD to potential clients. It will require Power Point and Adobe Acrobat to see everything. I have been wondering how many people had Power Point on their computer. If you would take a moment and vote it would greatly help me get a feel for this.

PLEASE vote even if you don't have any of software. That is useful for me know too

 

[Alan Simmons]

Jeff:

I do not know if this will help, but both Power Point and Acrobat have free installable readers. Will not cost you clients a penny. The trick is to get them to do such.

 

[Dan Leggett]

I'm pretty sure everybody who has a copy of Microsoft's Internet Explorer on their computer can read PDF files even if they don't have the full Adobe Acrobat Reader installed.

 

[Jeff Horton]

I am going to put the free version of Power Point and Acrobat on the CD with an easy option to install them. I am just curious as to how many computers all ready have them. Some folks are hesitant to add software to their computer from a stange CD they received in the mail. Or they should be anyway!

Dan, unless Adobe comes as part of IE 6 Adobe is not included. I have never updated to 6 because of all the problems I have heard about. But 5 and 5.5 don't come with Acrobat in them.

 

[Anonymous]

Why not just write in in HTML? Then you dont have to woory what they have. It simply runs on their browser.

Or use a self installing free reader only version on your cd. Then your client will not have to go get software to see your cd.

 

[Jeff Horton]

Bill, I started out just writing HTML pages. My thinking was exactly like yours. If you have any version of Windows you have a browser on your computer. The more I worked on this the more I realized that I was not taking advantage of the computer. Basically I was just presenting nice looking color pages. Not that much different than a professionally designed color brochure.

The whole motivation of this was to do something that would catch potential clients eyes and hopeful make an impression on them. Maybe when they decided to try another Appraiser or needed a Home Inspector they would remember the presentation and call me.

I then decided to do a Flash Presentation and just include the Flash program on the CD. An animated presentation would be much more effective and impressive than just plain HTML pages. I thought I could set up the HTML so that it would load the Flash Plug-in off CD. However that didn’t work the way I thought it would. People without Internet access would not be able to download Flash and see the presentation if they didn’t have the plug-in.

I did some homework and discovered the free Power Point viewer. That’s when I decided to make a Power Point presentation. I could do animation and include photos in it. A good friend of mine is a DJ and has a great voice and I have access to a good sound system. We tied the laptop into the sound system so we could record digital quality and recorded sound tracks to narrate the presentation.

Then I redesigned the HTML pages as sort of a backup and included a lot of additional information about my buisness. Like coverage areas, more on Home Inspections etc. I am also including PDF copies of my Licenses, sample appraisals etc. That is why I need the Adobe Acrobat.

The project started out pretty simple but like most of my projects it grew and grew. If you have ever remodeled an older home you are familiar with the “Might as well’s”. While we are at it we might as well __________. This grew from a simple HTML page to a animated presentation with a HTML pages and PDF package for the lenders to get me approved.

I figured while I am at it “I might as well” do it right.