Or - how hackers can use OO.o effectively and fast. Having been an ardent magicpoint user, and advocate for many years; I was amazed that in fact OO.o can be used almost as effectively (modulo the lack of emacs key bindings) for content, and can do so much more as well.
As everyone knows, they key to a good presentation is content, not gimmicks. Thus, it is vital to be able to edit the content, unimpeded by the trivial.
In order to do this, create your presentation, using a sensible layout; then immediately switch to outline view (View->Master View->Outline View). To do this press F12, Control-F12 will switch back to the drawing view.
At this point simply type; to get more indentation, press Tab; to loose a level of indentation use Shift-Tab;
So; having created a few bullet points, and switched to drawing view, you notice that the bullets look pretty awful, and you want to change them for the whole presentation.
Hit F11 - shows the style list, select 'Outline N' right click -> modify, and away you go - lots of funky options. Of course - you can also override those with sheet specific options, but that's less useful.
You can set a slide background image using Format->Page, Background->Bitmap. It is possible to add your own photos/images to the bitmaps list, just not in this dialog. Close the dialog and go to Format->Area, Bitmaps to find the Import button. Any bitmap you add here will be available as a page background. For more complex backgrounds (e.g. an image and a logo.), see below.
At the bottom of the screen, to the left of the sheet tabs, and to the left of the 4 sheet tab shuttling controls there are 3 very magic buttons. In order to edit the default page background / layouts in the template, switch between the 'Slide View' and 'Master View' radio-toggles. Generating sane templates any other way is not feasible.
Future versions of XOO.o will have this disabled; however for now the setting lurks in Tools -> Autocorrect, turn it off there for a less painful life.