- * pdflatex e.g. with foiltex, produces nice pdf files for presentations
* you can get fancy stuff by also using ppower4 - http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/suppor ... eadme.html
* acroread(TM) requires you to agree to the protection of adobe's "trade secrets" in addition to non-free copyright (you did actually read that legal notice before you clicked yes, i presume? ;) - acroread(TM) is not free software, it's only "free as in beer", or rather, "free as in opium" or some other illegal addictive drug... it's not "free as in speech"
* instead IMHO you should try xpdf - it's also faster than acroread, it includes stuff like internal cross-links, links to URLs which open windows in mozilla/firefox/etc - but it does lack a few of the more fancy features in acroread
You can carry your pdf file to conferences on a floppy (if you decide not to overwhelm the audience with more info than they can absorb), but probably best to have a CD-R copy anyway, since some laptops don't read floppies, and/or have problems reading CD-RW's.