Simon Barratt

Microsoft RoundTable

I took delivery of the RoundTable device last Friday.  On the surface it looks very eye catchy and garners lots of "what the hell is that?" types of comments!

Installation was straight forward, although the sparsity of documentation is concerning.  I had no idea what the Ethernet cable was for, until I started Googling around for more information.  It turns out you can connect it to you LAN for remote management and also allow the device to auto download firmware updates from Microsoft.

As a speaker phone, it works very well.  Clear and loud!  As a webcam it appears to offer good video quality, and the auto switching to focus on the current speaker seems to work very well.  Not had chance to play with the panoramic view yet, as that requires Live Meeting 2007 to test, which I have not got around to yet.

Now for some weirdness!  Currently it has a strange habit of ringing out every 30-45 minutes for no obvious reason - three quick rings, then silence again.  Very annoying and needs to be fixed asap.  I have a call into MS to see what they say.  I need a solution quick - my colleagues near the conference room are getting a tad annoyed with the ringing - it wakes them up!!!!