[X4U] Re: Video conferencing on a PC

[Scott McCulloch]

On Feb 24, 2005, at 9:58 AM, Steve Upton wrote:

>>
>> Does anyone here have any recent experience doing video conferencing 
>> on
>> a PC?
>
> A bit, yes
>
>> Some colleagues and I have been using iChat for meetings and are very
>> happy with it (though we'd love to have an integrated whiteboard --
>> having said that I just discovered that I can send drawings done in 
>> Ink
>> through an iChat text message - not ideal for our needs, but it was a
>> fun discovery!).
>
> I've heard you can hook up other sources of video to iChat as well but 
> that disables the live stuff of course.
>
> You might also want to look into WebEx for just the preso part. It's 
> pretty good for interactive preso stuff and you could probably sign up 
> for an account for the duration of your project for not too much$$$. I 
> would think it would work alongside iChat just fine.

I've done some experimenting with WebEx and ElluminateLive - certainly, 
for those clients who have Macs (or if we provide them), that might be 
a good solution to use iChat alongside one of those. I wonder what kind 
of hit it would be on the bandwidth, try to do both? When I've tried 
doing a Timbuktu connection while doing iChat, I've found that iChat's 
audio cuts out (I assume that's a bandwidth issue - of course, I could 
be wrong).

If we decide against the powerbook loaners, we'll probably go with 
ElluminateLive over WebEx - a little better Mac compatibility in terms 
of feature parity with the Windows version, and you can also save all 
whiteboards as pdf files. WebEx whiteboards can only be saved in their 
proprietary format, and you can't record the sessions from a Mac - 
although their interface is a bit better than Elluminate.


>
>> Anyway, we're now entering a situation where some of our clients want
>> to do meetings "virtually" rather than traveling to meet in person.
>
> right, we're there now as well.
>
>> So, one thought we had was that we could buy a
>> couple of refurbished powerbooks and use them as "loaners" for our
>> clients -- set them up with iChat and maybe iStorm for whiteboarding 
>> (I
>> haven't tested it yet), send them the powerbook and then have them 
>> send
>> it back after their program with us is done (building in a small
>> "rental" fee, of course). Who knows, it might even produce a few
>> "switchers" along the way. ;-)
>
> we did a test with a Mac Mini hooked up to an overhead projector and 
> it worked really well. Along w/ the keyboard and the camera it still 
> wasn't too expensive - no need for the display costs. People really 
> dig the bluetooth keyboard and mouse as well as they are the only 
> things on the meeting table.
>
> Also we used the "Sightflex" which is a handy holder for the camera - 
> sits right on top of the mini!
>
> <http://www.dvforge.com/sightflex.shtml>
>
> we also bought an adaptor ring for the iSight (overpriced from Kaidan) 
> and a video camera wide angle lens to get more of our group in. Works 
> OK... Apple should be smacked for not including threaded rings on the 
> front of the iSight.

Ah yes, the mini would be perfect for that kind of situation - great 
"wow factor" with the bluetooth stuff too!


>
> Now, as far as the PC is concerned, the AOL software does work but the 
> times we've tried it we have been hampered by:
>
> - AOL software also loads a bunch of that spyware crap that everyone 
> hates but PC users get to lump daily
> - configuration is not nearly as straight-forward as iChat
> - PC hardware has to be all lined up. Classic stupidities like "my 
> sounds card isn't working right" etc.
> - performance, even on a fast PC, is not as good as iChat. They love 
> what we send but what they send is fairly crappy. I think this is due 
> to a couple of things: the iSight is very good - most PC cameras are 
> fixed focus, low res, slow frame-rate, etc. Also I think the altivec 
> part of G4 and G5 processors does the compression very well and very 
> fast.
> - if you do phone conf instead of iChat phone the performance might be 
> better - I can't remember if you can shut audio off on iChat...

All good reasons to keep considering the "loaner" idea. Maybe with 
iBooks and Applecare as suggested by Stroller.


>
> Good luck w/ it... I should let you know that I have converted at 
> least one user to the Mac with the iSight/iChat solution alone.

I don't doubt it at all. It really is a great solution.


Thanks,
Scott