Wade College is location in the heart of the Dallas Market Center, Decorative Center, and Design, alumni.

It’s all about computer flat screens these days. I recently dumped my old CRT monitor (not easy by the way, CRT screens are considered hazardous waste and you have to use a municipal collection service to do it legally) and picked up my first computer flat screen and I’m just loving it. I can’t believe I waited so long to make the plunge; it has made such a huge difference for me.

How many meetings have you presided over where there was a scrabbling for the lights at the beginning and end of a sales pitch? One new addition to the meeting room technology market is interactive room-control systems. A room control system will allow you to control most of the electronic equipment in the conference room from a single centralized area.
A room control system ends all that scrabbling to switch on the lights, complaints that the thermostat needs to be turned down, and questions about who is closest to the projector (and who knows where the button is to turn it on).
Another more fundamental addition to technology in meeting rooms is a devoted computer. This is especially helpful for those that tend to spend a lot of time hosting meetings. Instead of needing to unplug and haul a computer into the conference room (or, worse, calling the tech unit to set one up in there for you), all you must do is bring a CD of your presentation, or use the presentation via the web. This makes setting up for meetings swift and effortless, and also helps with video conferencing, as everything is already in its place.
When you can meet a person’s eyes and analyze their body language, communication is more rapid and more consistent; a one-sided telephone lecture turns into, instead, a shared meeting. This is easy to attain with a good video conferencing system. With plenty of bandwidth and a quality internet connection, video conferencing is just as easy as a telephone call, especially if the meeting room is equipped with its own computer.
Another standard in audio visual systems for boardrooms is a digital projector. For those that have to use PowerPoint presentations as a meeting tool, a projector is an utter necessity. A digital projector will display any computer application on a white board or screen (or even a light-colored wall), helping you to reveal information, presentations, even digital films or satellite tv. Though digital projectors used to be prohibitively expensive, especially for smaller businesses, their price is falling as technology advances, making them an easily obtainable addition to the meeting audio visual system of any corporation.

A new edition of the electronic white board is the PDP, or Plasma Display Panel. A plasma display panel is fundamentally a huge, but much slimmer, flat-screen TV or computer monitor. PDPs are usually 42″ to 50″, and have a very clear, intense screen, making them great for video conferencing. Due to the fact that PDPs are a comparatively new addition to the audio visual systems market, they’re also very pricey, ranging from about $8,000 to $20,000. For around $4,000 extra, companies can invest in an interactive overlay for the PDP. This is a comparatively small investment when compared to the price of the PDP and when considering the many practical uses of a PDP with an interactive overlay. An interactive overlay will add touch sensibility and annotation abilities, allowing you to use your PDP just like an interactive whiteboard.

www.edgevision.co.uk