That will indeed drastically shrink the file size - that 175MB PDF goes down to 13MB - but it can also make the slides look thoroughly awful. If the slides are image-heavy, then you can always load the PDF into Preview and then do a “Save As…” where you select the “Reduce File Size” Quartz filter. If the slides use lots of bitmapped images, or you’re not on Snow Leopard, ShrinkIt can’t help you. So what’s the answer? ShrinkIt is fine if the slides use lots of vectors and you’re running Snow Leopard. Whatever you personally may think of net access at conferences, at this point, not providing net access is roughly akin to not providing functioning bathrooms. Not to mention the network will grind to a nearly complete halt. Now, hard drives and bandwidth may be cheap, but when you have four hundred plus attendees all trying to download the same 175MB PDF at the same time, the venue’s conference manager will drop by to find out what the bleeding eyestalks your attendees are doing and why it’s taking down the entire outbound pipe.
We had one speaker last year whose lovingly crafted and beautifully designed 151-slide deck resulted in a 175MB PDF. One of the things you discover as a speaker and, especially, a conference organizer is this: Keynote generates really frickin’ enormous PDFs.
