You can't use make because your version of Perl (and thus MakeMaker) is configured for use with nmake. The Makefile wants to use link but you probably only have ln. See Re: Installing modules on Win32 for more info.

So you don't need to use nmake, you need to reconfigure Perl to use the tools that you have. The easiest and only really supported way to configure this stuff is when you build Perl. But you can probably get away with reconfiguring by hand if you know what you are doing or don't mind learning what you are doing by trial and error and occasional research.

And, yes, you can probably use PPM because it sounds like you have ActivePerl. But there are plenty of modules that can't be installed with PPM because ActiveState hasn't bothered to produce a binary distribution for them.