For those in the business of presentations the data projector runs hand in hand as a tool of the trade almost as important as the notebook computer.

In the corporate board room a good data projector makes a difference. I know, as a journalist forced to endure endless hours of presentations every week, that the projector used can determine how I feel for the rest of the day: a bright, vibrant display (in a well-ventilated room) lets me concentrate on the show while dim, poorly illuminated presentations invariably bring on the most excruciating headaches and nausea.

For the experienced presenter the Super 8 analogy is far from the truth. Current state of the art in data projectors takes a horses for courses approach. For your lecture hall, a fixed projector is still the way to go and so forth down to the board room level of venue.

Itinerant presenters will tell you power and portability are the most important aspects to their equipment. In these features the PalmPro 7765PE has ample scope. 800 ANSI lumens of light will illuminate a normal sized room for up to 15 people. The 7765PE also weighs in at 2.3kg, which will match your notebook PC but without having you running through the Yellow Pages for a chiropractor.
The 7765PE is built with a magnesium alloy chassis allowing strength without weight and can project using its Advanced Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology and high resolution lens to 1,024 x 768 pixel resolution. The zoom accommodates a 1.5m viewing distance with a 645mm image, and can scale up to 5m with a 2.72m image. The viewing I did in the PC Authority Labs provided a bright, clearly legible display of text and graphics that was evenly lit across the entire expanse. There was no noticeable flicker even at 60Hz refresh. Unfortunately the 7765PE is not partial to high refresh rates at 1,024 x 768 resolution, so there will be occasions where a CRT will be preferred.

Installing the projector is a simple matter of plugging the VGA cable provided into the port on the right side to the VGA port on your graphics card. Provided the refresh of the graphics card is within the scan range you will get a picture after the mandatory warm up of the lamp. Zoom and focus adjustments can be manually controlled and there is a foot at the front of the projector for adjusting the height a small distance. There is an in-built S-Video port and if you need extra connectivity then Acer has options in an AV box which will handle RCA, S-Video input and audio output, or a TV tuner box with NTSC, PAL and SECAM support. Both devices simply snap onto the rear of the projector.

The Acer PalmPro 7765PE wont do anything that hasnt been done before in a data projector but as weve seen here, neither has there been one where you can have absolute confidence in presenting to a small group with so much portability.