As some of you may remember, I was not that happy with ReadyTalk. We tried WebEx and are now going back to ReadyTalk.
We tried WebEx because WebEx has an easy way for phone in callers to be identified in the app and all participants can see who else is on the call and who is speaking ReadyTalk calls from a cell phone into the system had lower audio quality than WebEx and AT&T. Our usage model is that we have 2-3 calls per week for two different centers. We send out email to the center-wide mailing list. The calls have 8-28 participants on them. We do not require people to register. Typically we have as many as 5000 minutes per month, with most people dialed in as opposed to using VoIP. The down sides of WebEx are below. WebEx has at least three different products that all have slightly different interfaces. We ended up using the Event Center, so my feedback is mostly about that product. I've also used the Training Center. We went with EventCenter because we have more than 25 callers. With Meeting Center, there was an additional charge for for more than 25 callers. My understanding is that none of the WebEx products have a way to send out reminder email to the invitees. Instead, they expect people to register and then get reminded. Our model is that we don't ask center participants to register for these regular meetings. Readytalk has a way to remind invitees with an email message, (BTW - ReadyTalk wants me to upload each email address and send invitations individually. I consider the list of participants to be somewhat restricted and am not comfortable passing this list to ReadyTalk. ReadyTalk's invitation does allow people to opt out, but when people reply, they opt out the entire list. So, ReadyTalk is not perfect here, but better than WebEx). The lack of invitation reminders is the primary thing that is driving me back to ReadyTalk. WebEx's Event Center does not have an easy way to preview the invitation emails, or at least I have not found it. Event Center is really for a 1:N style meeting where you don't want the participants to be able to speak. It is possible to enable all the participants to speak, but the person running the meeting needs to enable this for each participant. One needs to keep an eye on a window that does not resize and select a check box and then select enable. As people call in this is trick. If I select all and then unmute, all the participants are unmuted, including people that have selected mute. This is bad because all of a sudden what ever people are saying is heard by everyone. We wanted to set up a recurring meeting so that the URL did not change. My understanding is that with WebEx's Event Center, there is no way to set up a recurring meeting. We would need to upgrade to Training Center. WebEx changes $0.075/minute/person for toll free calling. I believe ReadyTalk is $0.023/minute/person. I've also used WebEx's Training Center. It works a bit better, but we were quoted $225/month + long distance charges. I believe that for 3000 minutes, we were quotes $225/month, so going with TrainingCenter for 5000 min would be $225/3000min. * 5000min. + $225 = $600. By comparison, I had 5032 minutes of ReadyTalk in September for $146. I don't see WebEx as 4x better than ReadyTalk. TrainingCenter does not have the 1:N problem in EventCenter. Training Center does have a Call Me button that is helpful. One place where ReadyTalk really shines over WebEx is that ReadyTalk's support is excellent. When I've had issues with ReadyTalk, their support has contacted me promptly. I did not speak directly with WebEx support, but my staff stated that WebEx support was not that familiar with product. I feel that ReadyTalk support really try to address problems and get feature requests into the system. Also, ReadyTalk's email includes calendar entries that easily work with Bcal, I just click on the link and it gets added to the calendar. WebEx's email has an iCal attachment that I need to save and then import separately. It would be really great if ReadyTalk made it easier for people to be identified in the call. Also, the participants should be able to see the names of the other speakers and who is speaking. ReadyTalk has other issues, such as the invitation opt out issue. ReadyTalk has international dial in numbers that are easily included in the invitation email. I think WebEx is geared towards a different use case than my use case. It expects people to register. It is not geared towards collaborative meetings of more than 25 people. WebEx is over 4x the cost of ReadyTalk. WebEx support is not as good as ReadyTalk support. BTW - Blue Jeans is out of scope because there is no dial in option and it is limited to 25 people. For a comparison between ReadyTalk and BlueJeans, see http://ist.berkeley.edu/videoconferencing/comparison Also, AT&T's teleconferencing solution on the Mac is abysmal. One of our corporate collaborators uses AT&T. Under Mac OS X Firefox, when I go to the AT&T URL, the page does not open, it continually refreshes with a status bar at the top about allowing a plugin or something. I have to use Safari with AT&T. AT&T email uses iCal and the mail that is sent does not include the time and date of the meeting in an easily read format. _Christopher -- Christopher Brooks, PMP University of California Academic Program Manager & Software Engineer US Mail: 337 Cory Hall CHESS/iCyPhy/Ptolemy/TerraSwarm Berkeley, CA 94720-1774 [email protected], 707.332.0670 (Office: 545Q Cory) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following was automatically added to this message by the list server: To learn more about Micronet, including how to subscribe to or unsubscribe from its mailing list and how to find out about upcoming meetings, please visit the Micronet Web site: http://micronet.berkeley.edu Messages you send to this mailing list are public and world-viewable, and the list's archives can be browsed and searched on the Internet. This means these messages can be viewed by (among others) your bosses, prospective employers, and people who have known you in the past.
