GIZMO

When times get tough and travel budgets go out the window, companies tend to start talking about videoconferencing. It’s no surprise that Microsoft has got ahead of this trend with its new RoundTable device.

It’s quite a gizmo. It takes 360-degree video of everyone in a conference room, and provides to people who aren’t in the room high-res video of the active speaker, switching automatically from one speaker to another to track the conversation. Alongside five cameras in each unit are six microphones, which also switch automatically. Using Office Live Meeting software you can link in other people with lowly webcams, or even people on the phone as voice-only participants.

Australia is one of the countries in which Microsoft has so far made this available, and a list of resellers in this country is available on the Microsoft site. Costs will depend on the seller: we gather they’re going for about $3,000 a set, which isn’t cheap, but the costs would be quickly recouped in terms of reduced travel expenditure.

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