A program that can easily replace having to draw on a board

Hi, I'm sure everybody who has presented IT related stuff had to draw a network or systems diagram during their presentation. And if your not good at drawing on a vertical board using a marker then you'd end up with a very messy and cluttered diagram. I luckily have a projector when I present but I always need to go infront and draw on the white board in order for the audience to get the feeling of how the whole process works.

Maybe there is a program that can easily replace the traditional 'drawing on the white board' method and just let me sit on the computer table and use the mouse to easily and efficiently insert computer icons, switch icons, network lines and the most important: arrows.

I think the closest program I know that is easy enough to use is Visio; just click and drag the icons you wish to show (instead of having to draw a box to represent a computer) but the main problem is the arrows; its time consuming in drawing a curved, fat arrows to effectively define all the stuff on the screen.

I hope I made it clear.

 

There are other programs similar to Visio. I don't remember them on top of my head. But google can surely help.

 

Ive made computer seating plans for our office using Powerpoint. It was quite fun doing it actually.

But theres lots of proper diagram creating software out there. Look around...

 

It's probably not exactly what you want, but I've heard that you can use a tablet PC with Visio to draw and make annotations. You said the time consuming part is making the lines right so maybe you could just use the icons and draw the lines yourself. Anyway, I looked up some similar products to Visio and came up with Diagram Studio, SmartDraw, and Graphviz (free).