Compress your PowerPoint (and other) files for easy emailing and handling

I was recently in touch with Mike Power, CEO of Neuxpower, the company that makes NXPowerLite. It’s software that compresses PowerPoint (and other) files. Just last week, I was working with an 11 MB file that wasn’t going through e-mail well, so I was glad to be reminded about this program that I’ve used in the past.

I sent Mike some questions and he replied via e-mail. Here is the interview.

EllenFinkelstein.com: What exactly does NXPowerLite do?

Mike Power: NXPowerLite removes bloat from oversized Microsoft Office, JPEG and PDF files. Typically these files don’t reduce much with traditional compression, but our software can often reduce them enough to easily send by email. Also, because we remove bloat from files rather than compressing, they remain in their original format, so you don’t need NXPowerLite to view or edit optimized files.

We have a demo that we use to explain our software at trade shows. [You can see it on the right.] Original document 6.2mb, when zipped 5.9mb, but when it’s optimized with NXPowerLite it reduces to 665kb. Better still, you can still Zip the optimized file and get the extra 300kb reduction you got with the original.

EllenFinkelstein.com: Could you give some scenarios of how people use NXPowerLite?

Mike Power: Anyone with a file that’s too large to email can use our software to quickly reduce it and send it on its way. Lots of organisations have included our software into their standard PC builds, to take advantage of the automatic email integration. This way they make sure any bloated files being sent by their people are automatically reduced in size. In the words of one of our customers “The problems caused by large email attachments have been instantly solved.” (Mitsui Engineering).

NXPowerLite also works well for defense customers; on expensive, low-bandwidth satellite connections, the difference between a 10mb PowerPoint and a 300kb PowerPoint is incredible both in terms of cost and speed/reliability of delivery. We have now deployed NXPowerLite to over 300,000 defense users across NATO, The United States Armed Forces and Allies.

EllenFinkelstein.com: How does it work?

Mike Power: Files can get pretty bloated as people put them together, so when they come to email them they’re too big. This is often a result of using the wrong image formats, or images much higher resolution than they need to be – and with digital cameras these days this happens very easily. The files can also often contain large amounts of background data not necessary for normal use of the file.

NXPowerLite cuts out excess baggage and converts images to the most efficient file format and resolution. What you’re left with is a file that looks and feels identical to the original, but is much smaller. The optimized files remain in their original format, which means you don’t need our software to open or edit them.

This graphic that illustrates simply how our software works. We also have a page on our website that goes into further detail.

EllenFinkelstein.com: Besides PowerPoint, what other programs does NXPowerLite work on?

Mike Power: In addition to PowerPoint, NXPowerLite works on Word, Excel, PDF and JPEG files, and can also optimize any of these files contained with Zip archives.

Have you used NXPowerLite? Had problems with PowerPoint files that are too big to e-mail?

Full disclosure: NXPowerLite advertises on this site and gave me a free copy of the software.