Variants to PowerPoint for math paper presentations? For a math talk, typing equations in PowerPoint is a really painful process, and yes, it's very far from the beautiful layout of LaTeX. 
Is there a FREE non-PowerPoint software which I can use to create a nice talk which has support for LaTeX? 
 A: Beamer is very powerful, and (after the usual learning curve) easy to use.  Looks good, too!
After unsatisfactory experiences with earlier LaTeX presentation tools, I have used Beamer (for contest typesetting) without too many headaches for a few years.  
A: As Andre has pointed out, Beamer is a "classical" way in which presentations are made for a math talk. It looks cute. 
Here is a very quick guided tour of how to use this package. (This link was found on the Wikipedia!)
Here is a tutorial that talks about other ways of preparing slides using $\LaTeX$ for a seminar talk. 
But having said this, I prefer giving a talk on the black board, and handing out notes for the talk.
P.S.: If the task is to be accomplished pretty quickly, you may resort to searching for a template. Ask Prof. Google and he seems to know pretty good templates!
A: Beamer in $\LaTeX$ is obviously the standard for this kind of thing (I'd also suggest TexStudio), especially if it is mostly math on the slides, but I thought I would mention some nice, newer alternatives.


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*Use Powerpoint or Slides, but don't go through the nightmarish experience of typing the math; just export the equations (say from this nice editor) and import them into the slideshow. Then manipulate them like images, which those programs are much better at.

*Beautiful presentations can be done with Javascript (e.g. using reveal or deck) with mathematical typesetting via MathJax (i.e. $\LaTeX$ for the web). (e.g. see also this question). This gives the added bonus of being able to upload your presentation to the internet instead of carrying it around, and run it in a web browser anywhere, anytime, but you still get to basically just type $\LaTeX$ (in the HTML). Also, no more issues with animations failing in certain PDF viewers, compatibility with versions of Powerpoint, etc...
