Conference Calls Through the Web

With advancing technology, computers are now getting more and more hi-tech. Later models of computers that are available require little, or sometimes no special hardware to carry out basic conference calling. Web-style conferencing or desktop conferencing is a great mode of one-to-one communication between different individuals. However, the current conferencing market is mainly designed for communication that is group-based and aimed at business.

Most web-style conference call systems are designed around a PC platform and include a camera as well as additional hardware to enable echo cancellation, acoustic processing and video compression. Web conferencing allows you to hold instant conferences anytime and with anyone from your desk itself. It does away with the need to rent a special conferencing room if you are in another city or country. With web conferencing all you need to do is send out an advance invitation e-mail and give your invitees the URL and entry code so that they can join you.

To enable web conferencing you would need to have a laptop or desktop computer that is configured to support multimedia, a microphone, a digital camera, video capture card, video card, sound card and headphones or speakers. Though this may sound intimidating to a newcomer to conference calling, most of the newer computers come with this hardware already built-in. Other than the computer, the only other major expenses will be on the microphone, the digital camera and the head phones. Buy good quality headphones so you get a clear sound. An IP service and a minimum 56k dial-up connection with cable or DSL are necessary for conferencing. Slower internet connections could cause annoying disruptions, interferences caused by net congestion and breaks while streaming.

There are several conferencing providers available on the Internet including Microsoft’s NetMeeting that allow you to share information, applications and ideas using audio as well as video. While a conferencing session is on, you can instantly view all items that are displayed within range of the lens, adjust the sensitivity level of the microphone to ensure everybody can hear each other and even alter the size of the video window. All this for a minimal and affordable fee. There are also several other conferences including Yahoo’s Messenger service that are available at no cost at all.

The requirements for the NetMeeting system are indicative of what you would need to look for in a computer for web conferencing.

* Windows 95, 98 and ME require a Pentium 90 processor with 16MB of RAM ( Pentium 133 processor or better with at least 16 MB of RAM is recommended.

* 4 MB free hard disk space ( during installation an additional 10 MB is required to accommodate the initial set-up files)

* High speed internet connection.

* Sound card with speakers and microphone

* Video capture camera or card

Most computers today average about 500MB with 80 GB hard disk space and conferencing should not pose a problem at all. In fact you can also do conference calling on some of the older computer models.