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Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

techcommunity.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#41

Post by froindt »

neves wrote: post #37
ghaff wrote: post #6

Effective distributed whiteboarding, etc. is something that the tech industry has been dithering with for decades and nothing has ever seemed to quite click. It feels that, with relatively inexpensive tablets [ADDED: and almost affordable big screen touchscreens], maybe we'll actually converge on something interesting.

Surface Pro looks really cool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-hub... Sometime ago I've read that its success was a surprise and the demand was greater than MS could produce. Is it really good?

I work for an international manufacturer. We're deploying Surface Hubs to all locations that have a good enough internet connection. I've only used it a couple times as a glorified whiteboard and had a good experience.

Apparently it has some very good microphones and software running. Regardless of where a person is in the room, it will adjust the microphone level so you can hear them clearly. The people training mentioned their location has had a couple instances where a little side conversation was broadcast to the other side. They made sure to mention that in every training session.

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#43

Post by darzu »

neves wrote: post #37
ghaff wrote: post #6

Effective distributed whiteboarding, etc. is something that the tech industry has been dithering with for decades and nothing has ever seemed to quite click. It feels that, with relatively inexpensive tablets [ADDED: and almost affordable big screen touchscreens], maybe we'll actually converge on something interesting.

Surface Pro looks really cool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-hub... Sometime ago I've read that its success was a surprise and the demand was greater than MS could produce. Is it really good?

*Surface Hub.

The Surface Pro is the tablet (and Surface Book is the laptop and Surface Laptop is the other laptop but it runs Windows S which is like Chrome OS but for Windows, and none of these should be confused with the original Surface touch table from Microsoft Research nor the Surface Studio.)

And yes, the Surface Hub is pretty good. I use it daily. It reduces the 5-10 minutes of wasted time getting Skype to work at the start of each meeting to ~1 minute. My only qualm is the sign in experience isn't as smooth as it should be, but that's the norm at Microsoft it seems.

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#44

Post by zamadatix »

endorphone wrote: post #31
DiabloD3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hub is an actual complete Surface PC. $9k is ridiculous, but it is more than just a whiteboard.

But in that case you don't want more than a white board. There are many cases, especially in the corporate world, where you want a single-purpose device that isn't going to need maintenance, group policies, etc etc.

Buying a device without "group policies, etc etc" doesn't mean you don't still need to implement them.

Damn I wish our company would stop buying Alexa/Home/Chromecast/Sonos/IoT-box-from-down-the-street.

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#45

Post by cptskippy »

froindt wrote: post #41
neves wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surface Pro looks really cool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-hub... Sometime ago I've read that its success was a surprise and the demand was greater than MS could produce. Is it really good?

I work for an international manufacturer. We're deploying Surface Hubs to all locations that have a good enough internet connection. I've only used it a couple times as a glorified whiteboard and had a good experience. Apparently it has some very good microphones and software running. Regardless of where a person is in the room, it will adjust the microphone level so you can hear them clearly. The people training men…

> a little side conversation was broadcast to the other side.

That's awesome actually. I work with a lot of remote team members and very often people remote miss these little side conversations.

When everyone is in a meeting room, the side conversations are fine and attendees can selective tune out if it's not relevant to them. However when team members are remote these digressions are often missed and they lose the opportunity to participate.

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#46

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

partiallypro wrote: post #18
DiabloD3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hub is an actual complete Surface PC. $9k is ridiculous, but it is more than just a whiteboard.

The next generation (that they recently demoed in videos) is expected to be much, much cheaper.

Can you provide a link or two?

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#47

Post by extra88 »

haslfkjhakj wrote: post #39
extra88 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the other footnote, I think the reference to "commercial users" is drawing a distinction between business Office 365 users (i.e. their own instance with a custom domain) and personal Office 365 users: > Whiteboard currently supports collaboration within Office 365 tenants for commercial customers, and across personal accounts for customers with a Microsoft account. Collaboration across multiple Office 365 te…

No, anyone can login. What they're saying is, O365 Commercial Users [companies using O365, not personal accounts] can only collaborate with other O365 Commercial users, while Personal users can collaborate with other personal users. Cross-collaboration [so, xyz@company.com collaborating with abc@outlook.com] will come later.

I was responding to the question asking if the iOS app will have to be paid for. Personal users may be able to collaborate but based on the other footnote, not through the iOS app.

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#48

Post by DIVx0 »

I really wish we could use Surface Hubs or this new whiteboard product at my company. We're a huge global enterprise and many development teams are split across boarders. It is very difficult to convey complicated technical work over a conference call or to whip out a visio type diagram on the fly.

We're heavy cisco users and are using Webex Teams (formally cisco spark) along with Cisco Spark boards. It's cool that it can work on any number of devices but the UX is far inferior to MS Surface Hub. Even with the bad UX these tools have been helpful.

These tools are expensive but they have paid for themselves many times over on time/travel savings.

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#49

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

DIVx0 wrote: post #48

I really wish we could use Surface Hubs or this new whiteboard product at my company. We're a huge global enterprise and many development teams are split across boarders. It is very difficult to convey complicated technical work over a conference call or to whip out a visio type diagram on the fly. We're heavy cisco users and are using Webex Teams (formally cisco spark) along with Cisco Spark boards. It's cool that i…

I share your frustration.

In my team, I estimate the cost of these boards are equivalent to the cost of about 3 face-to-face meetings of my team.

I think there's also a productivity / opportunity cost from only being able to share a whiteboard (real or virtual) during these occasional f2f meetings.

So it drives me a little nuts that management doesn't invest in this more, and treat team communications in general as a first-order problem.

I've been around long enough to know there can be factors I'm unaware of that management must consider, so I'm not assuming they're being irrational. I just don't know either way.

(I know there are other pros and cons for f2f meetings, making a purely monetary comparison incomplete.)

Re: Microsoft Whiteboard is now generally available for Windows

#50

Post by catdog »

ygra wrote: post #40
52-6F-62 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It excited me as a kid haha. Between that and Comic Chat, and V-Chat I was convinced the future was now . I kind of wish Comic Chat still existed (though everyone should be blaming it for Comic Sans)

Wasn't Comic Sans created for Microsoft Bob?

It was but it never made it into Bob because they did not manage to get it ready in time.
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