I think you're missing Tufte's point. He's not saying PowerPoint is useless- he's saying the way it gets used 95% of the time is useless. Too often they end up

I think you're missing Tufte's point. He's not saying PowerPoint is useless- he's saying the way it gets used 95% of the time is useless. Too often they end up putting their outlines directly into their slides, bullet point by bullet point, and insert graphics as a distracting afterthought. PowerPoint makes it really easy to do this, people are lazy, and this is what the audience has come to expect. That doesn't mean slideware HAS to be used that way. Steve Jobs tends to do quite well with it. Tufte himself uses PowerPoint for his conferences. I imagine he'd agree with most of what was said in the article. Keep it clean and visual, as a way of cueing the audience with mental images and (extremely sparingly) emphasizing the keyest of key points with text. It should be a springboard for the presentation and not the presentation itself. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water- these programs were created and has become so popular because they do something people want, and they're the best tools people have, even if they are wielded clumsily.