Paper Update

Added paragraphs comparing similar products.

Smart Technologies has been around for over twenty years and has persistently improved on touch sensitive technology. The board itself is listed for over $2000 and works in conjunction with a computer and projector and you can network up to 10 Smart Boards together. They also offer Synchronize, which is a classroom management tool that costs $1000/classroom. It allows the teacher to work with both local and remote students.

Overall, the product gets rave reviews. The heart of the software is the durability during real-time meetings and a familiar interface. Some complaints include no annotation of information, the software has many components which are not transparent, expensive for smaller organizations and not portable.

Microsoft Live Meeting 2007 relies on users downloading a client to use any of their advanced features which include support for features like 360 webcam support, integrated full-duplex VoIP, and support for multiple rich-media formats. A web based interfaced is also available with limited functionality. The main complaints are that the software is not very reliable, confusing instructions, no confluence of collaboration and expensive for licensing.

Lotus Notes Domino 8’s primary hurdle is its reputation. The name Lotus Notes has been associated with complicated User Interfaces, slow processing and poor work flow. Other than that, this deployment contains real-time collaboration, annotated collaboration history tool and management via a single console.