Choosing a Web conferencing solution
Published: 11 Mar 2005
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If your business requires frequent one-on-one meetings, say for brainstorming sessions, yet lacks a sufficient travel budget, you might be wise to cancel those expensive plane and hotel reservations and invest instead in one of these online Web conferencing services. According to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, his company will save nearly $40 million (~£22m) in travel expenses this year using Live Meeting, for example. However, even small businesses can benefit from these services. |
What you can expect from these Web conferencing services varies with the price, of course. The most affordable, Citrix's GoToMeeting, is a bare-bones presentation service that uses conventional teleconferencing centres for the audio portion while presenting PowerPoint and shared desktop presentations via desktop PCs. Raindance Meeting Edition goes one step further, adding whiteboard capabilities. Convoq ASAP Pro 2.0 takes Web conferencing a step further, adding one-to-one video and Voice over IP (VoIP) to allow participants to both see and hear content over their desktop PCs. There's also a free version of Convoq ASAP that's limited to two users.
Of course, the elite packages -- Macromedia Breeze, Microsoft Live Meeting, and WebEx -- offer the most bells and whistles, including a whiteboard presentation space, IM chat, multiple-party video, quick polling and the ability to record a meeting for later playback (useful for sales presentations or tutorials). But they also charge more.
| Web conferencing applications compared | ||||||
Convoq ASAP |
GoToMeeting |
Macromedia Breeze |
Microsoft Live Meeting 2005 |
Raindance Meeting Edition |
WebEx Meeting Center |
|
| Editors' rating | 6.3 | 7.0 | 6.7 | 7.0 | 7.3 | 7.6 |
| Cost per 5 users | free for up to 2 users (unlimited meetings); $249 per year for up to 15 users (unlimited meetings) | $49 per month for up to 10 users (unlimited meetings) | $375 per month (unlimited meetings) | $375 per month (unlimited meetings) | $274.95 per month (unlimited use) | Express, $375 per month (unlimited meetings); Pro, $995 per month |
| Participants must install apps on desktop? | Yes, uses Flash | Yes, uses Java |
Yes, uses Flash | Yes, uses ActiveX | Yes, uses ActiveX | Yes, uses Java |
| Host OS | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows | Windows, Mac OS 9.0 |
| Attendee OS | Windows, Mac OS 9.0, Solaris | Windows | Windows, Mac OS | Windows, Mac OS 10.3, Solaris 9.0 | Windows | Windows, Mac OS 10.2+, Linux 7+ |
| Browsers supported | Internet Explorer 5.0, Netscape 4.7 | Internet Explorer 5.0, Netscape 6.0, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 | Internet Explorer 4.0, Netscape 4.0, Mozilla Firefox 1.4, Safari 1.1, Opera 7.0 | Internet Explorer 6.0, Netscape 7.2, Mozilla Firefox 1.4, Safari 1.2 | Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher | Internet Explorer 5.0, Netscape 4.7, Safari 1.1, Mozilla Firefox 1.4 |
| Record and playback capabilities | no | no | yes | yes | no | yes |
| Whiteboard | no | no | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| VoIP | yes | no | yes | one-way only | no | yes |
| Video | yes | no | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Voice conferencing | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
| Polling | no | no | yes | yes | no | yes |
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