Presentation Director Helps You Present
Editor’s Note: Guest blogger Tim Supples got Matt’s permission to hijack his blog for this post. Matt is not liable for any and all content herein 
I came across a helpful blog post the other day, entitled “How not to suck at your presentation.” The author covers some technical tips for those who have to step up to the podium and use a PC to present. If you have a ThinkPad by your side, chances are you’ve got a great tool you may not even realize is there.
Presentation Director is a handy tool that makes managing displays, whether single or multiple, a piece of cake. I don’t intend for this post to be a tutorial on all of its features, but wanted to point out how Presentation Director can help avoid small technical blunders like those which the blog author describes.
A screen resolution of 1024×768 is usually safe. Higher resolutions may or may not work, depending on the projector, so know how to change your resolution quickly if you need to. Seriously: practice changing your resolution at home.
One of the first things you set in a Presentation Director profile is which displays you output to and what resolution each of those displays should be.
Disabling screensavers and screen blanking will improve your chances of a successful presentation.
The second screen when configuring a new profile has three check boxes, for disabling standby & LCD timers, disabling screen saver and creating a “clean desktop” which hides all of those pesky windows, icons, pop-ups and other nuances that may disrupt your presentation.
Start all programs (web browsers, editors, live demos, etc.) and open all windows you need before you start, and then switch to them as you need them. Murphy’s law clearly states that trying to launch a program during your presentation will fail in the worst possible way.
There is also an option to run a selected file when that particular Presentation Director profile is launched. Unfortunately you can only select ONE file to launch, but the more industrious users might use a batch file or other automated solution to launch a single file which in turn opens the other necessary ones. Perhaps this is a feature we should add in the future?
However by far my favorite feature of Presentation Director is the On-Screen Display. Press Fn+F7 and you get an immediate pop-up which allows you to select your display profile, and of course you can configure what happens when you press Fn+F7 if you don’t like the OSD.
The blog author makes a number of other great points to help you prepare for a presentation, I highly recommend you check them out. And now hopefully you learned a few things about how our ThinkVantage Technologies can make technology easier to use.
Megginson Technologies: Quoderat » Blog Archive » How not to suck at your presentation
Tim Supples
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December 12th, 2007 12:42 pm
I really like this tool. That’s actually one of the reasons I wanted a ThinkPad. I don’t know if any other vendor has such tools available.
However, since the upgrade to Vista the “When Notebook is docked” section is grayed out completely on my T60 (2007FUG). I never got it back working.
December 12th, 2007 3:35 pm
I second Gunnar, I always liked presentation director, including hidden but essential details as making the projector the primary screen so videos show up even in media player…
However, my upgrade to Vista, X61 Tablet, brought a new feature which I really don’t like, and haven’t found an option to turn it off:
Whenever I plug in the projector, the system automatically changes, activates the video out, choosing the last used setting to that device I think.
I really prefer to have this control myself, and turn on the output when I choose to…
Anybody had luck with disabling this auto-on feature?
December 13th, 2007 6:40 pm
Agreed, Presentation director is an awesome, awesome application and tool.
I use my laptop all over campus in different projector, screens etc. and its just so easy to set up, manage and (last but not least) change between the different schemes whenever needed.
Most of my fellow students mess around in the display settings within XP/Vista to match resolutions, arrange clone or split desktops – I just plug in, bring up the presentation director window and select. Easy peasy.
Thanks.
December 16th, 2007 3:20 pm
Presentation Director, also as some of the other ThinkVanatage related tools too, is and always has been a very useful and valuable tool! Let me say add, that it is also very well and clearly arranged, so that even the unexperienced computer/software users should feel very comfortable with it.
I basically mostly like all of those *ThinkVantage like* software tools, which do come along with ThinkPads. – However, what I don’t like are in contrast those boring bloatware (tryout-) things, which aren’t of any real use for the users and which are often badly eatuing ressources too, like for example these highly questionable Norton stuff etc.
December 16th, 2007 9:36 pm
Why on earth would you need this, when the built in Vista Mobility center does the exact same thing? Like so many “Thinkvantage” utilities, this duplicates perfectly good functionality already in Vista.
December 21st, 2007 12:21 pm
I agree, Presentation Director is a good software. I was surprised when I found that other brands usually does not have similar tool. They have to use dual monitor feature to show the presentation on second monitor so you lose the ability to have dual view on your notebook display.
The only thing I don’t like is that switching presentation modes always set display brightness to max.
December 25th, 2007 11:48 am
Major Flaw in Presentation Manager!
I am using this tool (Win XP) with a T40 and an external large Samsung TFT on DVI connector.
Unfortunately, the Presentation Manager always messes the monitor color profiles! The T40 (with a 18 bit TN display) and the Samsung 193 (with a 24 bit MVA display) have vastly different color spectra. Once I switch to the external display for a presentation, your software tool never switches back the profiles.
I.e. the interal laptop LCD runs under the Samsung profile, which looks horrible because colors are mismatched.
Maybe someone could fix this! (I have watched this problem in various previous versions, no fix yet until today!)
January 1st, 2008 5:17 pm
In response to Dan from 16-Dec,
If anything, it is Vista that duplicates functionality present in the various Thinkvantage utilities. These utilities existed for Thinkpads a long time before Vista was released.
March 17th, 2008 4:49 pm
When I change my X61T to slate mode during a presentation, I have to flip the base instead of the screen, because otherwise the X61T screen and the data projector are 180 degrees out of sync. Since the cables are attached to the base, rotating the base rather than the screen is very clumsy. Is there any way to flip the screen keeping the base fixed and have the same image on the data projector? If so, this would allow me to rotate my screen on the hoof, rather than have to rotate the base.
April 5th, 2008 5:19 pm
Steve, this is possible with the Intel extreme 2 tool in your taskbar. You need to have plugged a second monitoring device on your vga port, then you can choose dual and only rotate the monitor, then save the profile.
April 5th, 2008 5:27 pm
This relly should be fixed soon! Its also a major problem when undocking from the docking station. The resolution stays like the external monitor was, very annoying to have an oversized 1600×1200 screen to scroll on a 1024×768 Laptop display.
April 24th, 2008 6:51 pm
Just wanted to second the comment that the option to apply a display scheme immediately upon docking is sorely missed after my recent upgrade to Vista. I would be grateful if you / your team / Lenovo could address this issue and correct the icon rearrangement problems so many users are reporting at forum.thinkpads.com. Aside from these small but obvious issues, congratulations on a very useful application.
May 14th, 2008 4:37 pm
+1 for #11 and #12.
Two issues that need fixes soon:
1. Enable the “When Notebook is docked” setting in Vista.
2. In the “Edit > Display > Position” dialog, instead of just 4 positions (above, below, left, right) allow users to drag screens around because very often the default alignment is not correct and needs to be fixed using the Windows display panel.
Another suggestion: adding a Help file for this app will be useful too!
June 20th, 2008 7:52 am
I second the more than 4 positions selection.
Is there some way to save the position settings so that Presentation manger remembers the setting when I switch back to the multiple monitor profile. I have a 1600 by 1200 external so it does not match with the 768-1024 screen very well. I want it to align the bottom of the displays when I select the left position, not the top. That would mean the alignment would resemble the physical locations of screens and be much more intuitive.
But good job otherwise.
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lenovo X61 Tablet
July 9th, 2008 1:12 am
Presentation Director does not show the correct resolution for my external monitor. the only choice is 640×480. How can I set a resolution of 1200×1600?
Now I have to go into my graphics card setting or into windows to make the change.
Thank you,
Moderator removed personal contact info.
July 9th, 2008 2:37 pm
Mark – I might suggest you ask the community over at Lenovo Forums http://forums.lenovo.com
July 25th, 2008 5:33 am
[...] Presentation Director – Fn+F7, an utility to manage your video configuration [...]
October 9th, 2008 6:06 pm
Sure, Presentation Director would be great if it didn’t get confused all the time and fail to apply display profiles, and if the Fn+F7 hotkey didn’t stop working after about a week.
January 27th, 2009 2:54 pm
Question.
The disable screensaver option during powerpoint presentations seem to not work when the windows GPO to enable screensavers after 15m is applied. Is this correct?
December 24th, 2009 12:27 am
Question also:
How can I change my display scheme to monitor only with this tool…I cannot not seem to create one that transfer graphic completely to an external monitor; however such function exist as a alternative to the scheme list for the Fn+F7 behaviour…is there any way to add an external display only option in the scheme list?
December 24th, 2009 12:35 am
Oh I figure out that one…on the device type selection screen you must not click any option for the second monitor…It’s suggest that for the next version a “None” selection should be added to the list of second devices…