Warning: this post contains explicit details of my relationship my with soon-to-be ex.

I heart PowerPoint. I started using it when I was a student, I think around 1997. At that time most people didn't know it existed, outside the business world.

At first I was shy, just writing a couple of key words on a few slides. Then I started falling in love and I wanted more - that's how girls are. I got a glimpse of all its nice features: the transition effects, the sounds, even the programmed buttons and hyperlinks. We had passion. PowerPoint came along with me when I presented my thesis to the jury in college, and we did a great impression.

Then came corporate world, and I must say, if I am good at one thing in business, it is making presentation. That was so easy, with my beloved PowerPoint.
Everyone knew about us and our great relationship.
Event at home, when I switched to Mac 4 years ago, I couldn't leave PowerPoint for Keynote. Keynote was nice, but it was just a fling.

Of course, people (hum, softwares) change, and PowerPoint was getting older, more mature, a bit different, but always the same old one I had always known.
Until recently. Maybe it's mid-life crisis, but that much change came unexpected to me. I changed jobs in April, got a brand new PC, and there it was: PowerPoint 2007, all brand new.

At first I got curious about its new features: new templates that look young and professional. New styles and color sets.
But then came hell. I got used to the "office button" because it's on every Office program and I had to deal with it. Still, I don't like it much.
That ribbon idea, it got me confused. Where, oh where were my buttons and menus??
And then came the worse: thinks that I really liked in PowerPoint, things that were making my life easy, were gone. The drawing bar, gone. The selection pointer, gone. When I want to draw 10 lines, I need to go to the insert/shapes menu and click on the line button and draw ONE line and DO IT ALL AGAIN. That makes me crazy.

And I haven't even tried to apply effects to objects or transitions between slides, yet.
I am telling you, PowerPoint and I, it's over.
Thing is, we are going to have to keep on leaving together for a little while. I can't do my job on my own without it.