PictureTel Debuts 600 Series

With its latest product, PictureTel Corp. (www.picturetel.com) is bringing down the cost and size of video conferencing solutions, while harnessing the power of collaboration tools. The PictureTel 600 Series, which was announced today and is part of the company’s iPower family of products, is a compact, set-top product that is small enough to place on a desk, or meeting room table, and starts at $6,995.

“Small and medium-sized businesses can now get in the game because its less expensive, and now at lower price points, [large businesses] can begin to populate more conference rooms,” says Ned Semonite, executive vice president of marketing for PictureTel, noting that the cost of previous systems have been prohibitive for widespread deployment of videoconferencing solutions.

The PictureTel 600 Series is what the company refers to as a “next-generation collaboration tool,” combining the functionality of the PC with the Internet and videoconferencing. The 600 enables easy connection with standard business peripherals, such as projectors, flat panel monitors, white boards and printers. The system also enables sharing of ideas and information from LAN-based or laptop applications, or the web, with local and remote videoconference participants.

The device has a two-part design, which can be set up all in one piece or splint into two – a camera/microphone unit and base station.

PictureTel also expects to announce tomorrow enhancements to its PictureTel 900 Series, the company’s flagship product, which is designed for the most demanding business user. The upgrades in Release 2.0 include PictureTel’s Pro-Motion real-time video compression technology, Dual Images natural interaction capabilities and enhanced support for Microsoft Exchange.

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