Comparison of 5 leading conferencing tools:

	Centra Symposium	LearnLinc	Placeware Conf. Center	WebEx Meeting	NetMeeting
Presentation materials	Wide variety of content	Wide variety of content	PowerPoint slides	PowerPoint slides, MS Word documents	Any application
Live software demos	Yes	Yes	Yes (with optional plugin)	Yes	Yes
Application sharing	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Annotation tools	Yes	Yes	Yes (presenters only)	Yes	Yes
Floor sharing	Yes	Yes	Yes (limited functions)	Yes	Yes
Textual chat	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Polling/Voting	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes (on-the-fly only)	No
Web tours	Yes (guided with annotation)	Yes	Yes (not guided, no annotation)	Yes (guided, with annotation)	No
Whiteboard	Yes	Yes	Yes (presenters only)	Yes	Yes
Breakout sessions	Yes	Yes	Yes (limited to chat in rows)	No	No
Multipoint IP audio	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Video	Yes (presenters and audience)	Yes (presenters only)	No	Yes (presenters only)	Yes (point to point only)
Automatic notification of scheduled sessions	Yes	Not sure	Yes	Yes	No
Recording of sessions	Yes	Yes	Yes (no audio)	Yes	No
Platforms	Windows only	Windows only	Windows; Solaris; Mac (unstable)	Windows; Mac (unstable, with limited functionality)	Windows only
Client requirements	At least 4th generation browser. Best when used  with MSIE. Automatic installation of client when accessed for the first time.	Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and at least 4th generation browser	At least 4th generation browser	At least 4th generation browser. Automatic installation of client when accessed for the first time.	Windows 95/98/NT/2000
In-house server deployment	Yes	Yes	Not available	Not available	Not applicable
Other comments	Consistently offered high quality IP audio from the beginning. Somewhat child-like interface with iconic, non-text buttons. Content can be preloaded on the server for pre-session access.	Very similar to Symposium. One-way video requires third-party streaming server. Presenter can select and show portion of student’s screen.	Auditorium metaphor gives users sense of place and community. Insufficient support for IP audio. Best suited for one-to-many lectures and presentations (as opposed to many-to-many collaboratives).	Sessions can be setup very easily, with no preparations. Materials can not be uploaded in advance.	Works best for 1-on-1 conferencing. Free.

Updated December 5, 2001 by Vlad Wielbut