Keeping our loan officers centralized and working on 'live' transactions, rather than scouring the countryside looking for referrals, increases our efficiency tremendously. Finally, there is what is called a whiteboard, a common area on everyone's screen which is used to display graphics while workers make comments, manipulate the data, and come to consensus. The whiteboard can be marked up and simultaneously viewed by all workers connected via the video conference. The firm makes circuit board test equipment, and its customers include computer manufacturers . The firm's workers use Communique to display a picture of a part along with test results with its manufacturing customers such as Intel and Compaq Computer.
Desktop systems cost a tenth as much.
The choice depends mainly on the kinds of meetings you want to have over the video link. For large meetings though, the room conference system is still preferred. The rooms have the ability to connect a personal computer's video output so meeting participants can view spreadsheets or computer-based graphics files during the discussions. The key difference is the constant availability of the video stream at your desktop, as opposed to the need to reserve and then travel to a special video room for a video conference. Each video conferencing system works with a different kind of computer, video and audio hardware, so it is hard to make any generalizations.