Dear Santa..... My Christmas List for 2010

This year I have been generally good, with a few episodes of overindulgence all to report on the bad girl front. Whilst I know this is the season for giving, could you do some taking instead? If you take a few features in PowerPoint away, you will be giving back thousands, if not millions of hours of life to those who might otherwise suffer from Death by PowerPoint next year. I know they are big asks, but if anyone can do this, you can.

Please, please delete the Word Art function - it's about as clever as writing your name using an etch-a-sketch.

Ditto clipart - those bean men might have seemed clever in the days when an electronic typewriter was the height of fashion, but honestly, have you seen technology nowadays? Would the iPad have clipart?

Please delete the function that lets people print out their PowerPoint slides as handouts - it only panders to lazy presenters and bores us all with prose-ridden slides (when did the "visual" part of a presentation become a page of a book?)

Please also delete all the hideous PowerPoint design templates - which I think is pretty much all of them - a blank white screen is preferable in many cases, especially that one with the annoying ball that moves across the screen for every single bleeding slide.

Please also delete the following functions:
* adding sound effects - unless operated by a skilled sound effects guru
* animating words so that they spiral in front of our eyes - unless part of a Derren Brown hypnosis
* and finally bullet points - nuff said

Thank you very much in anticipation of a much more inspiring year of Presentations.
Yours humbly
Sparkie

I am sure I will think of a few more, but these would make me very happy in 2011.