hi,

i think in many cases it's pretty simple: the money paid for the network
comes from a different pot of money/department than the money for
setting an AG node. the network usually exists as part of the infrastructure
in a campus environment, while any particular department may decide
to set up an AG node. i can try to convince the infrastructure people to
fund my AG node, but that's not usually how it works. so, for me, the AG
node cost comes out my own budget, which is constrained by all  the
other things i want/have to do as well.

i agree with randy that the cost of the echo cancellation in a standard AG
configuration is a very high proportion of the total cost, especially if you're
running a single box AG as we are currently and am equally interested
in a cheaper solution. we have used headphones perfectly successfully
for single participants, but would like to make the technology disappear
for the non-techie users so they concentrate on their collaboration
and not on the tools themselves.

our current cost-saving echo cancellation method is a Polycomm Soundstation
for a couple hundred bucks and works pretty well for our small room 
node for 4 people around a round conference table.

-gurcharan

===========================
Gurcharan S. Khanna
Associate Director
Research Computing
Dartmouth College
gkhanna@dartmouth.edu
office: 603-646-1644
http://research.dartmouth.edu/
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~rc
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gkhanna


--- Tom Coffin wrote:

can someone please elaborate on the facination
with cheapness. I mean we are talking about a multicast
environment with a minimun ds3 connectivity right? that aint too cheap.

on the other hand,
if you really want to get around the echo cancellation for nothing
wear headphones!

just curious....

_______________________________________
On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Randy Groves wrote:

    > I'm looking at the prices for setting up some nodes, and in this economic 
    > climate, the $3000+ price for the Gentner sticks out like a sore thumb, 
    > when you consider that it might be feasible in the near future to put all 
    > of this stuff on one reasonably priced box.
    > 
    > ASPI, now part of Polycom, is one alternative, but that's still $1800.
    > 
    > Has anybody found a cheaper alternative?  A card for a PC?  An 
    > echo-cancelling microphone?
    > 
    > -randy
    > 


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