It's a good time to be a presenter. PowerPoint has gotten better. Notebook computers have gotten faster, smaller and less expensive. Ditto for projectors. You can cram everything into a laptop bag and take on bigger audiences.

They can see your presentation just fine, but can they hear you? A sound system is not a given in most rooms, and even if there is one, you've got to find the audiovisual person, do a sound check and succumb to the limitations of the system, such as being imprisoned at a podium or tethered to a microphone cord. If your presentation has an audio track (mine generally do), you might or might not be able to mix it into the room system.

The solution is to take charge of your audio destiny. I've been testing AmpliVox's (www.ampli.com) new Wireless Audio Portable Buddy, a small, attaché-size amplification system that weighs a mere 4 pounds and is barely larger than a full-size notebook.

The Portable Buddy can run for 200 hours on batteries and can fill a room with its 50-watt amplifier and built-in speaker. As the name implies, this model has a built-in wireless receiver, allowing you to use a hand, tie-clip or headset mike. Couple that with the wireless controls becoming more prevalent on projectors, and you're free to roam, ready to interact with your audience.

The Portable Buddy could have come out of 007's bag of tricks, with its slim black case, sliding control panel cover on the rear and folding "rubber ducky" antenna. The industrial plastic case looks like it can take the worst of what road warriors can dish out.

I compared it with my previous solution, an Altec Lansing ADA 70 three-piece desktop system, in a large room. The Altec, with its 20-watt subwoofer and 7-watt satellites, put out plenty of volume, as did the Portable Buddy. Music sounded much better through the Altec system, but voices sounded muddy and indistinct when compared with the Portable Buddy, which emphasizes the midrange. This emphasis lets you cut through background noise such as air conditioners and unruly audience members.

For convenience, there is nothing comparable. The Altec has a couple of input jacks and no provisions for microphones. The Portable Buddy, in addition to its built-in wireless mike receiver, has inputs for dynamic and condenser mikes, a line input, outputs for stereo speakers, a line output, and a satellite speaker. The mikes have a volume control separate from the line input, which also sports a tone control. The Altec cannot be battery-powered and weighs, with a duffel bag, a hefty 18 pounds.

For sheer portability and punch, however, I have yet to see anything that can beat the Portable Buddy.