Projectors Advice

Rather than having to lug a laptop and projector around I'm after a projector that can show a PowerPoint presentation on it's own. I believe these generally work by converting the PowerPoint show into a series of images that are displayed via some flash memory.

I've found a couple of potentials:

Panasonic PTP1SDEA
The brightness is 1500 lumens, this seems low compared to most others, but will it still be sufficient? Uses SD card.

Hitachi CP-X268
2500 lumens. Takes USB sticks.

Can anyone recommend either of these, or an alternative? They seem to be few and far between. Will I have to buy separate software to convert PowerPoint to JPEGs?

The brightness is an issue if you are likely to be projecting in high ambient light conditions and/or projecting large images - the nature of what you are projecting onto also matters (a proper reflective screen will give a brighter image than the ioff-white coloured wall!)

If you can, have a look at the output from several projectors - and above all, look at the cost and availability of the lamps! Its not unknown for the replacement lamp in a £500 projector to cost anyting up top £200!.

You might find USB sticks to be more versatile.

Powerpoint allows you to save a presentation in JPG format (save as on the file menu)

Nice one, especially about the PowerPoint functionality. :)