Animated GIF for Presentations

If you're using powerpoint for presentations you know how tricky animations can be if you're presenting on different computers. PPT 2010 seems to be better at handling the problem of embedding files but I don't know. PDF can now play video but it'll probably be awhile before the world as a whole can use it. That means LaTeX and beamer might not be useful yet (I LOVE beamer presentations though!).

I've mentioned before that I work in an office with both Mac and PC and a variety of PPT versions so I need compatibility across. I also want decent resolution without massive files attached to my presentations so I'm converting my .avi to animated .gif. These files seem to be about 1/10 to 1/5 the file size and SHOULD embed easily into a powerpoint document.

I'm not going to write out the steps to making nice animated .gif files because this guy (xFL1PPYx) did such a WONDERFUL job of showing how to do it. He uses GIMP and GAP (GIMP Animation Package). Both are free. The links are given in his video description.

Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5_3MGP2Lj4&feature=related

Update:
Since I've been using OpenAVItoGIF.  It's a free program that converts everything neatly and has some nice options.