In case you didn't know, Org-mode in Emacs has support for export to Beamer. It frees you up from needing to use LaTeX at all: http://orgmode.org/worg/exporters/beamer/tutorial.html

Probably not reason enough to learn Org-mode, but good to know if you know the Org-mode basics. (Basics of Org-mode are simple but it can get pretty complicated b/c so many features.)