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Interview with Jay Green of Balesio PPTminimizer

PPTminimizer is a program that compresses PowerPoint presentation files, without changing the file format. I interviewed Jay Green, Marketing Manager, about this product. I recently received a 29 MB PowerPoint presentation and needed to compress it, so I was interested myself and thought it might be of interest to my readers.

EllenFinkelstein.com: Describe briefly what PPTminimizer does.
Answer: PPTminimizer compresses PowerPoint and Word files by up to 98% without changing the format. As opposed to other types of compression, the receiving party doesn’t need another tool, or to run ZIP.

EllenFinkelstein.com: What is it about PowerPoint that seems to uniquely need software for compressing files?
Answer: A lot of times PowerPoint presentations get awfully large, partially due to people putting large images in them. This can easily result in presentations that are 25-100MB. There is the function within PowerPoint itself to compress images, but it doesn’t do the compression as well.

Also, millions of presentations are made every day. A lot of producers have problems sending them out to customers and colleagues. PPTminimizer offers a lot more convenience. People can be more productive rather than spending time sending the presentation files.

Another reason to compress is that a growing number of sales people are using mobile devices, and transfer is both expensive and time-consuming. Also, it takes a long time to open a file.

Finally, there's the issue of storage size. In a lot of companies, on a company-wide scale, presentations take up a lot of space. Some have
terabytes of PowerPoints! So there are storage, backup, and transfer costs.

EllenFinkelstein.com: How can PPTminimizer compress a PowerPoint file without changing the file type?
Answer: It works with meta-information, which is unneeded information contained in files. It compresses on the file level, without affecting the content. This is also why the process doesn’t change the date when the file was last modified.

EllenFinkelstein.com: What other features does PPTminimizer have?
Answer: Pack ‘n’ go compresses a file and puts it in the e-mail client, such as Outlook or Lotus. Also, you can choose from different compression levels. For example, you can go for a lower level of compression to assure better image quality. There’s an intelligent algorithm that checks different ways of compressions and finds best solution; by default it uses that.

In addition, there's a search assistant that lets you search by date, size, and file type.

Our add-ins for PowerPoint, Word, Windows Explorer, and Outlook give a lot of convenience when sending files. They automize the compression of files as you e-mail them.

EllenFinkelstein.com: What about reducing crashing and freezing?
Answer: It's one of the benefits of shorter loading times. If you have a slower, less powerful computer, it can crash with a large presentation. This isn't the reason most people buy PPTminimizer, but that value is certainly there.

Also, while presenting, large files may increase the time for slide transitions to take place, which distracts from the persuasive effect.

EllenFinkelstein.com: How many users do you have?
Answer: A couple of hundred thousand users. not necessarily all paid/registered users.

What’s important to understand is that there’s a client version for shorter loading times as well as faster, easier sending and receiving, but there's also an enterprise version for servers. This is an amazing technology that’s out there that doesn’t get as much publicity. It’s a storage solution. If you have a smaller data volume, it reduces storage and backup costs. The value on a huge scale is massive and pays off in a few months, much less than a year. It's used by universities, governments, and larger corporations.

EllenFinkelstein.com: How much does PPTminimizer cost?
Answer: A single license for the client version costs $39.95. But we've created a special link for EllenFinkelstein.com viewers to get a discount, so it will cost only $35.95. And there's a bigger discount for more licenses.

EllenFinkelstein.com: I've created a special page with that link. On that page, you can also view a demo and download the trial, but to get the discount, you need to buy from that page.