Thanks I’ll give ir a try.

Not surprisingly I guess, it appears they're all sold out or at ridiculous prices at the moment.

Did a quick search and both Best Buy and Office Depot have it... and Office Depot has it on sale for $79.

I use:

• Microsoft lifeCam Cinema HD (think I bought it around 10 years ago)
• ViewSonic 24" monitor I got for free several years ago
• Aukey 7-in-i USB-C hub with a Ravpower 65W power supply, which lets me connect all USB peripherals and the monitor via one USB-C cord that also charges my laptop
• Plantronics Savi W740 headset - the best headset ever!

Appreciate the heads up! I forget about ole Office Depot. Should be delivered tomorrow.

Thanks. It worked. I had my zoom call from the New Reading Room at the British Museum.

Very good suggestions. We set up my wife's workspace with a docking station yesterday so she would have a good keyboard and monitor, We will get mine set up by this weekend, The work habits suggestion are also very good.

I should note that I am really liking Zoom the more I use it,

Hah, thanks. I stole it from the Pricess Bride, long before Ulbricht created the Silk Road.

More topical, and now that I'm not using my phone to type that message out (yeesh I just noticed how it munged things like " ...

My desktop machine is a home-built machine, but I use a vintage IBM Model M with a custom USB cable. I am a touch typist (not so much when I'm writing code, but when I'm writing docs and emails I can comfortably sit at around 70-80 WPM) and find that a good mechanical keyboard is far easier than those little cheapo keyboards. I burned through two Unisys Model Ms, those are built using the old IBM plans, but using cheaper materials and don't last. My first real Model M lasted nearly 15 years and that was AFTER it was already over 20 years old. This one I bought was New Old Stock and still in it's original box and should last longer than I do. I've not tried one of the other new mechanical keyboards (using the Cherry MX and similar switches) but they would probably work ok as well. But there's something satisfying about the heft and tactile response of the old IBM Model M.

For a webcam, I agree with the Logitech 9xx cameras... they're fantastic and work with pretty much anything.

We got our second office space set up earlier than I thought. It’s ready to go now. Have a large external monitor ready and a wireless keyboard and trackpad coming Saturday. I have some another external keyboard and mouse I can use until the weekend.

I have an old Model M keyboard sitting in a closet. I used to haul it out once in a while because I love the feel, but I can't say it really improved my typing speed at all. I also missed the dedicated Windows/Start key.

My current keyboard infatuation is with the Logitech MX Keys wireless keyboard. It has a very similar feel to the best of the IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad keyboards, and I can type like a demon on it. Minimal travel but solid feedback, and no horizontal slop. I love the proximity-sensor enabled backlight. I currently only have one primary computer, but in instances where I would need a client-supplied laptop I can pair the keyboard (and mouse) to both and switch between them with the press of a button.

The MX Master 3 mouse is an awesome option, too. Very comfortable, configurable, and the scroll wheel has to be experienced to be believed.

My webcam is built into my primary display (ThinkVision X1 4K). It's HD/1080p (which doesn't do my looks any favors). The monitor and webcam work great, but the built-in microphone doesn't get along with Windows 10's USB mic implementation. I had to download and install Equalizer APO to boost it by 30db, then install a VST plugin to clean up the background noise. Definitely not studio quality, but quite acceptable for VoIP.

Webex has enhanced their free plan to remove the 40 minute limit on meetings, and also now includes dial-in access (not just VoIP) and support for up to 100 participants.

probably why Webex doesn’t work at all anymore for calls with video

We use webex at my job, and we've noticed multiple issues with the audio since wednesday. Some callers get all circuits are busy messages, and some when using VoIP, notice that the audio keeps cutting out. Is Zoom acting any better?

Zoom is working well for us. Haven't used it since Friday though. I have a call coming up this afternoon on Zoom.

Yes, one can have participants connect to zoom meetings from China without any VPN.

I use it as part of my online courses and training, all meeting passworded.

Is this different than any other day for Webex?

I work for a linux company, and the two worst tools that I'm forced to use due to customer requirements are, in order, WebEx and Lync/Skype For Business.

WebEx, for me, is spotty at best, and Skype doesn't work at all most of the time, even on my MacBook under OSX :(

We use Google Meet, Bluejeans, and Telegram mostly and they seem to work pretty well for all needs.

I've used zoom for many many years now and have never really had any issues. current company has webex which I've used just fine since Jan 2019... but in the past 3-4 weeks it has totally GTS. When the announced about a month ago they would make it free to all for 2 months, I figured that might be the end of the reliability and it was. As of now, I've moved my whole team to zoom and its working much much better.

+1 for hating on WebEx. Thankfully we just moved to MS Teams. It's a shame too, WebEx was like the earliest player in this space, but after Cisco bought them, innovation pretty much ceased. The current product is an overbloated pile of dung if you ask me.

Routers: Asus for most people, PFSense + Ubiquiti for advanced users, GL.Inet Mango / Slate for travel.

I've been recommending the Asus routers for the past few years. Their AIMesh system works fantastically and they're solid. The best part is someone can start with a single Asus mesh-capable router, and add another Asus Mesh router down the road if needed, or use their existing Asus router as a mesh node if they decide to upgrade to a newer router. Unlike the other mesh setups, each Asus mesh-capable router is a full router/wireless AP, so if your main router gets damaged, you can use one of the others as primary and life goes on until you can replace it. VERY important in somewhere like Florida where lightning, unreliably power companies, and hurricanes are common.

Our techie types run PFSense/M0n0wall/Mikrotek routers with Ubiquiti APs. It never ceases to amaze me how much abuse PFSense can take. I wish more hotels would go with something like this.

+1 on a GOOD keyboard! I'd add to that, a good MECHANICAL keyboard. I find the mechanical keyboards to be much more enjoyable and accurate to use, almost like the difference between using a nice fountain pen vs. BIC/ballpoint pen. I have a nice stash of IBM Model Ms, but I also have a few of the newer mechanicals as well. For 'portable' use, I'm currently using a Velocifire TKL02, which happens to sit perfectly on top of my MacbookPro's keyboard. It's much better than even the best laptop keyboards. Admittedly, it's heavy and a pain to carry around, so I only drag it with me if I'm going to be at a location for more than a few days, but it's worth it to me. I do have a Velocifire M2 and Keychron K6 on order which should make better travel companions. Most disappointing keyboard: Logitech K400. A compact wireless keyboard+touchpad seemed like a great idea. Except the keyboard on the K400 is terrible. It's the first and only keyboard I've ever used where my fingers hurt after just typing a paragraph on it, and I've been typing for 35 years.

Phone: Cisco 525G2. I know there's softphones, but I still prefer a physical phone. These are cheap on the resale market, support SIP, WiFi, and Bluetooth. You can even pair your mobile phone with it and use the Cisco's interface & handset for mobile phone calls. It also is quite happy using my phone's hotspot as its connection.

That article is clickbait written by someone who has no clue what she's talking about.

Keyboards and headphones are nerd black holes ;). I'm also pro good keyboard but it may be difficult to find at this stage. My rec is that if you aren't picky, use whatever you have or borrow it from work if possible. My employer basically said if you can carry it and need it - please take it home. If you share WFH space with others then for their sanity, perhaps use the quieter mechanical keyboard and/or order more noise cancelling headphones.

Headphones - Bose QC over-ears tend to work with mic & audio for zoom PC/mac calls via bluetooth. Sony WH-1000MX3's don't seem to allow enough bandwidth for voice when connected with my macbook (perhaps a different supported bluetooth codec ?) and/or the mic has gotten worse since I bought it. The mic doesn't work when it is plugged in with the headphone jack (as per spec). My in-ear headphones with mic will tend to fall out if I don't insert them properly like ear plugs and/or when I'm talking for longer durations. I should have brought my over-ear mono headset home from work but would need another usb-c w/ PD dongle to support that. I'll probably get some cheap ear add on ear hooks for ear pods and/or V-Moda Boompro to add to the Sony's. Zoom also lets you call into meetings via phone.

Question about a remote whiteboard
 

We might have a use for a virtual whiteboard that I can draw on and multiple people can see in real time. We have available Zoom, Google Docs, and iCloud and assorted Apple apps. Hardware wise I have an iPad Pro and a Pixelbook with a touch screen. I’m generally thinking something like broadcasting a presentation to remote people and marking up the slides but I’ve never really done anything like this. It could be a two component thing too, maybe sharing a screen in Zoom from an iPad and writing on the screen with an Apple Pencil? Any thoughts before I start trying some stuff out of stuff anyone knows works wel or doesn’t work well? Thanks.

When you share ppt screen you can mark it up within the professional version of zoom. Once you are done you can save the marked up image as a file.

I use a 32in monitor retrofitted with touch screen and mark up capabilities for zoom and live training. At live training my "little screen is projected to the big screen"

There is also a whiteboard only share screen as well.

I just find the extra real estate easier to mark and annotate.

NB: practise before going live

So, with the zoom app an ipad and apple pencil that is a great third screen for sharing and doing any sort of markup. At this point I'd just get a cheap ipad and an older apple pencil for this.

From there, I've setup zoom rooms with fully functioning whiteboards that are integrated into the zoom room and allow in room users to do large wall whiteboarding - probably not the best thing today since everything is solo and remote.

I've setup rooms with this big tv whiteboard, from DTEN https://dten.com (pretty spendy, but corporate clients buy them and get about 20% off with 2+)
and some with this simpler overlay for current grease market whiteboards https://kaptivo.com/zoom-rooms/ (pretty cheap overall, but monthly fees over time)

I've also setup google jambords, this is a very nice solution for companies that are heavy google cloud users, with video, whiteboarding and saving, sharing, remote sharing, remote markup (using ipad/tablets and finger/stylus) This is the closest thing to minority report that one is going to find.

Jamboards are pretty $$ too like 5K and annual support/maintenance fees.

Tried to use WhatsApp video call for small group. Audio was terrible (noisy). Couldn't hear even 1 word! Zoom was better.

Has anyone with a Macbook had an issue where Zoom does not release the audio input/output after the app is used? For example I do a Zoom conference, then I want to watch a Youtube video but can't hear anything, or I join a meeting on another platform and no one can hear me - usually killing and restarting coreaudio does the trick (although I shouldn't need to do this), but this most recent issue, even doing this multiple times, the audio was not reset properly and I ended up removing Zoom and rebooting.

I haven’t seen that. Are you using a headset for Zoom and the speakers for the other audio? If so maybe it doesn’t hand back the audio stream to the speakers.

Apparently Zoom doesn't like Mac users... 😒 More vulnerabilities discovered in the Mac version...

https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/04/01/s...lnerabilities/

The same headset for both

Weird. I only use the headset for Zoom but haven’t noticed any trouble on a MacBook Air. My headset is a Sennheiser BT headset with a USB dongle.

Zoom's completely and hopelessly overwhelmed. I have 5 calls into their sales staff, 2 tech support tickets...14+ days and no response.

We've been playing with Jitsi.org. Doesn't have the security issues that Zoom has. For that matter, it doesn't have any issues for us at all -- it's entirely browser-based. NO software to download! They also allow phone dial-ins as well. Perhaps not quite as polished as Zoom, BUT it's open-source, free, and you can even host your own server in your own data center if you're worried about privacy (which is what we're doing).

join.me is also a low cost video conferencing solution that works well. $10/month for the base plan.

Also GotoMeeting is good (more polished and more features than join.me but more expensive).

If you have Office365 you probably also have MS Teams, which is great.

I've been working from home for close to a month now (about a week or so before my employer made it mandatory). A few comments:

Internet: I'm finding that the pitiful upload speeds Spectrum provides--even while on the ~940mbps/Gig plan--are a hindrance on occasion. (I'm a software developer that has to do a fair bit of uploading to work's servers.) If AT&T ever starts offering Fiber here, I'm definitely going to take them up on it. Even a 5G connection from them that does better than ~40mbps upload speed would be preferable. Fortunately, other than YouTube and Netflix taking a few seconds longer to start playing video, general internet use seems fine.

Home network: Fortunately, my personal setup was already pretty good prior to all of this happening (Ubiquiti ER-Lite router + UAC-HD access point + Netgear/Mikrotik 10GbE switches). My desk is near the router, so I use Ethernet for my work laptop even if it's not strictly necessary to.

VPN: My work uses GlobalProtect with mandatory 2FA to log in, so no worries about security. USB write access is also disabled by IT policy, though reads are still okay. VPN speed tests could be a bit better--I just got something like 180mbps down and ~30 up using speedtest.net now. (Without VPN, I can get ~750mbps down on Wi-Fi using my MacBook Pro--and Spectrum's advertised speeds over Ethernet.)

Conferencing: My team has a daily Microsoft Teams meeting (formerly Skype for Business). It seems to work okay for conferences, but how chat works in Teams takes some getting used to compared to Skype. An organization I'm part of outside of work is using Zoom for meetings now and it seems to be working well too.

Also, for our work meetings, we never use our webcams, so no worries there. However, there's definitely a difference in audio quality depending on what team members are using. Occasionally hardware and/or software issues cause garbled audio, too. I use a Jabra headset that the IT department gave me when I went in to get Skype reinstalled and I've gotten no complaints.

Work/Life Balance: Not that we're particularly doing much of anything while there's a shelter in place order going on, but working from home does make it easier to work and be expected to work outside of "normal" business hours. I'm not sure this is a good thing long term if this causes organizations to reconsider on-site employment. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind my eight hours being done predominantly in the evening as long as I'm only expected to do 40 hours a week or so.

Anyway, hopefully everyone's staying healthy. May we return to something approaching normal as quickly as possible (though I'm surprised that it's already been a month).

A month ago, Zoom didn't have the security issues that Zoom has, either.

Or rather, of course, it did - they just weren't known/public. I'm certainly not going to say I put a particularly high level of trust in Zoom - they have shown from previous actions that in many places security certainly wasn't one of their main design concerns - but I don't believe it's fundamentally insecure, in the same way that I don't think anyone could say that Jitsi doesn't have it's own (unknown) security issues. Yes, the fact it's open source helps, but that's not a panacea for "no bugs".

eg, zoom has been hit with people "zoom-bombing" meetings by guessing/brute-forcing meeting numbers. Jitsi don't use meeting numbers - it allows you to enter a meeting name. Do you trust your staff (all of them, not just some of them!) to not start a meeting called "SalesMeeting", which is infinitely more guessable than meeting number 2895422281?

Which perhaps works as long as your meetings are 100% internal, and your staff all use VPN, and your IT staff as on top of things to update the software when bugs are found. Maybe for you that's true. For most people, it won't be. Of course, you can still use it if it's not 100% internal/VPN, but now you're just running another service open to the internet, and that negates some (but not all) of the benefits of running it yourself...

Zoom fixed the UNC path bug within a few days of it being found. The fact it existed is bad, but the value of a cloud service is that it's now fixed for everyone (OK, so in this case it's a client bug, so you're still relying on users to actually update the client - but at least the cloud service is pushing out the new client)

The Zoom war-dialing is possible, in part, to a limited number space for the meeting ids. This is a design flaw that they should have fixed long ago.

And, although the pick-your-own-name method opens the door for problems, I think Jitsi deserves some credit for suggesting "Correct Horse Battery Staple"-style names as suggested defaults.

They did fix it year ago, with passwords and/or waiting rooms. The issue is that people choose not to use them in the interest of convenience.

I sort of wish someone would break into one of our zoom meetings and turn someone into a sweet potato or something to liven them up.

I still don't trust Zoom at this point. They've found themselves unexpectedly in the spotlight, and it's amazing what light can reveal. And this is what we know so far. It seems like every day new vulnerabilities and shenanigans come out: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archiv..._and_pr_1.html

Zoom still hasn't fixed known security issues that have been out for more than a year:
For now, we're still running Jitsi internally AND externally, and for the super-sensitive stuff it's Signal.

I think that issue was fixed late last week with the last remover and installer.