by cfma » Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:26:41
HI all,
I need to use a whiteboard that has at least the following feature:
1. Multiple pages;
2. Save multiple pages at once as a session for later review;
3. Compress images to reduce delay in transmitting large colored bitmaps;
4. Stable connection(the whiteboard won't drop call after a while).
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Here are some drawbacks of netmeeting whiteboard that we are currently use.
We understand that netmeeting whiteboard is kind of old so we are seeking
better alternatives; we don't care about audio/video. We just need
whiteboard.
1. We've found that if we idle(not drawing on the board) for a few minutes,
the whileboard will display "not in a call",
and re-clicking on the "whiteboard" button does not work; we have to exit
netmeeting on both sides and re-launch netmeeting on both sides, then
re-click the "whiteboard" button...
What's wrong with our netmeeting whiteboards, why did they drop?
2. It also suffers from not having compression for transporting bitmaps. If
I copy and paste a bitmap to the whiteboard, it is certain that my partner
has to wait a very long time in order to see the picture on his side.
Sometimes it took too long that the connection seemed to be dead.
We have tested: for the same bitmap, if we save it as a file, then use
Winzip, or WinRAR, the compression ratio is 20-30 times, the file can be
transported with a few seconds. See the problem?
The netmeeting whiteboard does not compress before it transport the bitmap.
That's very bad.
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So we'd like to try out some other alternatives of whiteboard software,
which has multiple pages, and can save the whole session, and has
compression for large bitmaps and has stable connections.
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We have tried those online meeting and web-conferencing service, their
common theme is that selling service is more profitable than selling
software. They charge a monthly fee. The problem is that we don't
intensively use this and paying a fee seems not cost-effective. Also often
times they don't provide multiple pages...
We don't care about/need audio, we don't care about/need video, we only need
whiteboard, a good whiteboard, could anybody recommend a good whiteboard
software for online collaboration?
Thanks a lot!
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We are currently taking a huge pain in trying to get MSN Messenger 7.5
whiteboard work, audio/video all worked; but whiteboard did not work.
We want to ask: if we use MSN Live Messenger 8.0, and make it work
eventually after some painstaking, is the whiteboard a lot better than
netmeeting's whiteboard regarding the several problems we've met in
netmeeting?
One more question: is the core of whiteboard in MSN messenger the Windows
Messenger 5.1? Is this 5.1 the newest version of Windows Messenger, and
hence the newest whiteboard we can use?
Thanks a lot!!!
