How to Bring in New Equipment to Your Conference Room

It’s unusual how meeting rooms are some of the last places you’ll find technology in the office. Sure, you’ll have the latest Video Conferencing technology in the offices themselves. And, yes, every executive-level employee in the company will have a Blackberry, a pretty, quick little laptop, and an office with Video Conferencing.

After a digital projector, the next step in conference room technology is the electronic whiteboard. The conventional dry erase board has been a conference room standard for years. But it has limitations which really show when compared to some of the Video Conferencingtechnology on the market today. For one, everything written on a dry erase board is temporary, and must be erased to leave room to write more. This means that, if the presentation notes will have to be referred to later, one person will have to be assigned to take notes off the board. But this old-fashioned practice is a thing of the past. Electronic whiteboards abolish the need to take notes by hand, as all that is noted on their surface can be printed (as with Copyboards), kept as digital information (as with Peripheral boards), or even be arranged, grouped, and interacted with (Interactive Whiteboards).
A new edition of the electronic white board is the PDP, or Plasma Display Panel. A plasma display panel is fundamentally a huge, but much slimmer, flat-screen IP TV or computer monitor. PDPs are generally 42″ to 50″, and have a very clear, intense screen, making them great for video conferencing. Because PDPs are a relatively new addition to the Video Conferencing market, they’re also very costly, ranging from about $8,000 to $20,000. For around $4,000 extra, companies can invest in an interactive overlay for the PDP. This is a somewhat small investment when compared to the price of the PDP and when bearing in mind the many practical uses of a PDP with an interactive overlay. An interactive overlay will include touch sensibility and annotation abilities, letting you to use your PDP just like an interactive whiteboard.

www.edgevision.co.uk