Data+Projectors

I use the data projector in my computerlab/classroom's ceiling almost every day. Here's some things I like to do:

Since I teach Adobe CS4 (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.) I want to show all the tools and control panels clearly. The remote on the data projector has up/down buttons for "digital zoom" that zooms in on everything, including the controls, tools, and dialog boxes that would stay small when you enlarged the image. When I first started using it, I would forget to go back to "full screen", particularly if I was working off my workstation, which (at the time) was situated so that my back was to the projection screen.

I'll finish a PowerPoint show, and decide to show something else that requires digging. I press the "Freeze frame" on the remote, and leave the final image up while I go to the desktop or my doc's or whatever and find the next item. When it's up and ready, I click the remote again and show the current image.

I think that the transition of snapping off the lightswitch and plunging the room into darkness is abrupt and distracting. I also don't like fluorescent lighting, which is about all you have in classrooms. So I hung some big white ricepaper globes ("Chinese Lanterns") with warm incandescent bulbs from the ceiling, and use that as my normal classroom lighting. I can turn my data projector on and off without changing the lighting, and the students can still see their screens. The atmosphere is so much better than the overhead fluorescents.

Can you contribute to this discussion on using data projectors?