Mentor Media Group Introduces Mentor for PowerPoint 2000

New e-Learning Solution Completes Suite of Mentors for Microsoft Office 2000

Norwalk, Connecticut, USA, 17 July 2001 -- Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 just became easier for employees to use, and less costly for corporations to support with the release of Mentor for PowerPoint 2000. The new e-learning solution helps employees understand and use all the features of the world's most popular presentation software without having to attend classroom training or even crack a manual. This latest release from Mentor Media Group (www.trymentor.com), the industry-leading content developer in multimedia e-Learning, completes the company's suite of Mentors for Microsoft Office 2000.

"Mentor is an efficient, cost-effective way for corporations to get more value out of their investment in new technology." says Dan Gallo, CEO of Mentor Media Group. "It gives people a natural, easy was to learn as they are working. They don't have to leave their desks, stop what they are doing, interrupt someone else, or call a help desk, and that all adds up to more productive employees plus a faster, bigger return on the company's investment in Microsoft Office. And by offering a complete suite of Mentors for Microsoft Office solutions, we give companies a single desktop solution for supporting PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook"

Unlike other e-learning solutions, the Mentor product is integrated into the software it supports. That means the Mentor icon appears in the toolbar of the application. Whenever end users are stuck or have a question about how to perform a task, they click to watch a short, dynamic, show-and-tell demonstration. The effectiveness of this on-demand learning, and its impact on reducing the burden on help desks , have resulted in the rapid acceptance of the company's flagship Mentor applications, which are currently licensed to over eight million corporate users worldwide.

"Many companies are not getting the full benefit from PowerPoint," says Vice President of Sales & Marketing Scott McEwen. "Companies seldom send employees to classes for an upgrade, so people never even know about the enhanced capabilities of the software. Mentor solves this problem by delivering demonstrations right to the desktop-the moment a person is trying to create a PowerPoint presentation and wants to know how."

Mentor is integrated into PowerPoint 2000, so whenever a user has a question or is stuck, the answer is immediately available just by clicking the Mentor icon. Users see and hear a 30-to 90-second multimedia demonstration and can instantly perform the same steps themselves. This "real-world performance" is a much more effective a way to learn than the simulations and tests used in classrooms or CBT courses. Mentor's multimedia format with a human voice acts like a virtual tutor to show and tell how to use all of the software's features. It's a much more pleasurable and faster way to learn than having to read and scroll through the layers of text of Microsoft's built-in help text.

With 109 animated just-in-time demonstrations, Mentor for PowerPoint 2000 enhances and extends users' knowledge beyond the program's basic presentation composition and delivery functions. For example, it demonstrates how users can create and save presentations on the Web and deliver them in real time online, animate and add audio to presentations. In addition, Mentor helps users become experts at PowerPoint 2000 functions such as the Tri-Pane View, which allows them to add slides, edit text and insert comments in a single view, as well as many other functions.

About Mentor Media Group

Mentor Media Group (formerly VSI Communications Group) is a leading business communications company offering custom and off-the-shelf e-learning solutions. With over six million user seats sold, Mentor programs help companies get more out of their new technology by making users successful the moment the technology is deployed. Mentors are appropriate for a wide variety of products and services offered by software developers, hardware manufactures, ISPs, makers of wireless devices, and developers of e-commerce sites or exchanges.

Mentor delivers just-in-time, multimedia support via local networks, CD-ROMs, local hard drives, or streamed over the Internet. Mentor products are available in multiple languages for Lotus products such as Notes, Sametime, QuickPlace, and TeamRoom; for popular Microsoft products such as Windows 2000, Windows Me, Outlook 2000, Word, Excel, and Internet Explorer; as well as for Netscape Navigator and custom applications. Mentor has become a learning standard at Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, DuPont, DaimlerChrysler, GE Capital, Duke Energy, and Colgate-Palmolive. Mentor can be experienced online at http://www.trymentor.com.

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