I am using Power Point 2000 which may affect some of your answers to me.
Yes, and thanks for mentioning it.
There's Presenter View, which appeared in later versions; this enables you to see
your notes and slide thumbnails on your laptop screen but only the slideshow
itself on the external screen.
But it requires that the PC offer true multimonitor support and more important to
you, only appears in later versions of PowerPoint.
That said, there's a dodge that may work IF you have true multimonitor support:
Choose SlideShow, Set up show
Under "Show on" choose the monitor that feeds your projector.
Start the show. It should appear on the external projector, while PPT stays in
edit view on the main screen.
You can use the keyboard to control the show as you normally would (press F1 for a
list of commands). You can also move the mouse over to the projected image and
clcik there.
If you click on the main screen, you'll get a "Resume Slide Show" toolbar; while
the show's suspended, you can edit it if you like. If you switch slides, your
main and show screens will get out of synch temporarily but will synch up when you
start advancing the show again after clicking Resume Slide Show.
There's more about multi-monitor support here:
A Multiple Monitor Tutorial by PowerPoint MVP Chirag Dalal
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00476.htm