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Registered
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Westford, MA USA
Posts: 8,861
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We use Webex in my company. Two other option I believe are "Readyconference" and Skype. We use Readyconference for teleconferences, but I haven't used their features for sharing Powerpoints. Skype also allows video teleconferencing, but I'm not sure about sharing desktop views.
Regarding WebEx, It works fine, but there aren't access numbers for every country. It is also well integrated in to MS Outlook so that the meeting automatically get scheduled into your and the participants' calenders with all of the dial-in and password details. The two "issues" that I've found to date are these.
1) If you schedule and then update a meeting, the conference information changes. I had a meeting where another participant forwarded the invitation to other people prior to me making a change. The result was not everyone was able to dial-in without some confusion.
2) If I create a meeting with a local customer and one of our factories in Asia, and then physically go to the customer's site for the meeting, it's a real pain to log-in as the administrator if my PC doesn't have web access through the customer's network. If I don't log-in as the administrator, the meeting can't start.
Neither of those may be an issue for you. The good things?
1) The phone connections are generally good, with very little noticeable delay with Asia.
2) If you can't get a phone connection, or chose not to, you can use the microphone/speakers on your PC to connect, or else plug-in a headset. Once again the connection quality is very good. If you have a camera on your PC, you can video conference. This can be a good or a bad thing.
3) Passing presenter status to other participants works well.
4) The control panel highlights who's talking at any given time, even if they have dialed in using a phone. You can also re-label the listings to help to keep track of who is who.
All in all I like the service and have found it useful.
__________________
John
'69 911E
"It's a poor craftsman who blames their tools" -- Unknown
"Any suspension -- no matter how poorly designed -- can be made to work reasonably well if you just stop it from moving." -- Colin Chapman
Last edited by jluetjen; 05-05-2009 at 05:55 AM..
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