GoToMeeting

Citrix's GoToMeeting can be an economical alternative to routine business travel, which can be tedious, time-consuming and a serious budget buster. This basic Web conferencing program lets you conduct online meetings with clients, associates -- or just about anyone else with a broadband connection. GoToMeeting displays what's on your computer screen -- for instance, a PowerPoint presentation -- to one or more meeting participants, who can, with your permission, also control your PC or display their screens. And since GoToMeeting integrates with Microsoft's Outlook, you can schedule meetings and invite attendees from inside your email client (provided it's Outlook). Although GoToMeeting lacks the sophisticated videoconferencing, whiteboard and VoIP audio features of leading competitor WebEx, it's far easier to learn and costs a lot less, too. For basic PowerPoint presentation meetings, GoToMeeting is an excellent choice.

Setup & interface
Aside from a few setup quirks, GoToMeeting is easy to configure. The process begins at the Citrix Web site, where you register by creating an account username and password. As with competing conferencing programs, your meeting participants don't have to register as GoToMeeting users or pay money to participate in your online session. However, hosting online meetings on GoToMeeting is a bit tricky. If you're the account administrator, you must send an email message to yourself via the GoToMeeting site. This email grants you permission to host meetings. This approach is clumsy for small businesses or workgroups where the administrator and host are the same person; however, it makes sense for large corporations where an IT manager maintains the GoToMeeting account but doesn't actually conduct any meetings. Hosts and participants alike need to install the GoToMeeting conferencing software, a 2.2MB file that takes less than 5 minutes to install. To arrange a meeting, invite your participants via email or instant messenger. Emailing invitations is easy, thanks to a GoToMeeting plug-in that installs as a toolbar in Outlook 2000 or later. When working in Outlook, simply click the Schedule Meeting button, enter your username and password in a pop-up dialogue, and then provide the meeting time, date, duration and email addresses of invitees. Don't have Outlook? You can schedule meetings through the GoToMeeting site or directly from the program's interface. Each email invitation includes a link to your meeting. If the invitees haven't yet installed the GoToMeeting software, they're prompted to do so after clicking the link. For a small business, GoToMeeting is better value than WebEx. The standard version of GoToMeeting costs $69 (~£38) per month for unlimited meetings and allows up to 10 attendees per session. By comparison, WebEx is dramatically more expensive: $375 (~£205) per month for unlimited meetings, but that price allows only up to 5 concurrent attendees.

Features
GoToMeeting handle the basics of Web conferencing very well, while eschewing the flashier features found in WebEx. As a result, GoToMeeting's interface is very clean. A right-side column clearly displays all the conferencing tools you'll need. Large buttons have useful text descriptions: Show My Screen, Pause Showing Screen, Give My Keyboard and Change Presenters. To turn off screen sharing, for instance (perhaps you accidentally opened your stock portfolio), click Pause Showing Screen. An attendee list displays everyone at the meeting, and a chat box allows you to exchange text messages with one or all participants. As with WebEx, the interface takes a little practice at first (we recommend you spend a few hours familiarising yourself with it before braving a meeting with clients or colleagues), but becomes fairly easy in a short time. The program has its shortcomings, though. For example, GoToMeeting lacks an overlay feature that allows you to edit a document -- writing comments in the margins, for instance -- without altering the original file. And unlike in WebEx, there's no whiteboard for scribbling down notes, ideas, diagrams and so on. True, you could always share an application such as PowerPoint with participants, but we'd like to see true whiteboarding capabilities in future versions of GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting lacks videoconferencing and VoIP audio, two bleeding-edge tools that are often tricky to configure and use. Citrix provides a number for GoToMeeting participants to phone once the session begins. But if videoconferencing is a must, you'll need to pay more and use WebEx instead.

Service & support
Citrix GoToMeeting comes with free email and phone support, as is the case with its competitor WebEx. In our tests, Citrix's support personnel, by both email and phone, responded quickly to our queries and speedily solved our dilemma over how to assign meeting host privileges. The GoToMeeting program includes a link to Citrix's support site, which provides helpful how-to advice, but it could use more troubleshooting tips. Email technical support is also available.

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