Voice and video web conferencing for professionals can be quite pricey, however, last Friday was fortunate to have the opportunity to experience a live demo of HearMe - an affordable voice over IP desktop conferencing solution at $29 per month.
HearMe uses H.264 video technology and demo participant Mike Bush recommended that user computers have a Pentium 4 2.0 GHz with 512 MB RAM for optimum performance.
"HearMe is a great fit for many vertical markets. It can be used for everything from distance education and financial services to corporate training initiatives," said Hannah Rothman - senior marketing director of HearMe.
"We’ve got the ability to include as many meeting participants as necessary. We’ve got nine years of experience making desktop video conferencing like this possible, because we’ve built HearMe on the same platform as Paltalk." "Allowing anyone who participates in a meeting to share documents is a key differentiator for us. Think of a teacher being able to check their student’s work in real time, while engaging them face to face." "Putting the VoIP capabilities in HearMe let us eliminate the conference bridge that’s so typical of web conferencing solutions like WebEx." |
HearMe Screenshot:
Easy to use and 100% web based, my live HearMe demo (shown in screenshot of the demo above) featured real-time desktop and application sharing with PowerPoint and Excel, file transfer and private as well as group text chat.
NOTE:
A very cool meeting moderator feature was the ability to throw a miscreant out of the meeting (luckily, the moderator asked me to rejoin after realizing I was the only attendee).
HearMe Demo:
| HearMe vs. Cisco WebEx Feature and Pricing Comparison: | ||
|
Feature Being Compared |
HearMe |
Cisco WebEx MeetMeNow |
| Audio Conferencing |
Included (No additional charges) |
Long Distance Charges Apply |
| Video Conferencing | Unlimited* | None |
| Application/Desktop Sharing | Yes | Yes |
| File Transfer | Yes | No |
| Moderator Functions | Yes | Yes |
| One to One Chat (IM) | Yes | Yes |
| Group Chat | Yes | Yes |
| Web-based |
No Download Required |
Requires Download |
|
Unlimited Meetings for 10 Attendees Monthly Fee |
$49 Per Month |
$49 Per Month |
| Annual Fee | None | None |
| Commitment Term | None | None |
* Number of videos dependant on the bandwidth and performance of user's PC.
Which product would you choose, HearMe or Cisco WebEx MeetMeNow and why?
Brad Reese is research manager at BradReese.Com, advancing the careers of 1 million certified individuals in the growing Cisco Career Certification Program.
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