Since I’m doing more speaking this year, I decided to spend a bit of time working on my delivery and presentation. One of the things that I really like to do is walk around a bit and engage the people that are in the audience. Depending on the room and layout, I might end up quite a distance from my laptop during the presentation.

That’s resulted in my running, or at least jogging, a few times back to the laptop to advance the slide. A couple of times my daughter has been co-presented, or as she puts it, my lovely assistant, and that’s helped, but since I can’t depend on her to attend with me, I decided to look around.

I mentioned this at one point and Andy Warren sent me a link to a remote presentation device. I searched for a few similar items, but decided on the Logitech 2.4 GHz Cordless Presenter (Black) from Amazon. I liked the fact that it had a timer on it, it advances slides forward and back, and has a laser pointer. While I don’t do a lot of pointing, I figured it was nice to have.

One other nice feature, no install.  Plug it in and it works.

When this arrived, I unpacked the device, annoyed by the very, very difficult to cut through packaging. When are companies going to stop using those heat sealed plastics?

Inside the box I found a folded instruction booklet, which has 4 or 5 languages printde on each pane. I prefer that to separate English from other instructions, and it was easy to go through. There are about 5 steps.

The device takes 2 AAA batteries, and a pair of Duracells were included, so I didn’t have to track any down. There’s a soft case that closes with Velcro as well. It's small and I keep it in my laptop bag.

During my last presentation, it worked great, I set it for 5 minutes less than my time (so I had a 10 minute buzz in my hand) and was able to wrap up in a timely manner. Definitely recommended for speakers.