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What are some of your experiences on setting up a viable easy to use presentation set up for your meeting rooms?

We have a 70 inch TV hung on wall in a conference room at our new office. I am tasked with trying to figure out the best way to allow employees the ability to hold meetings/presentations in this room. Users will need the ability to display power point presentations excel … Perhaps videos etc …

I have it basically down to two choices,

Intel Compute Stick running windows 8.1

Or using a Google chrome cast

Budget isn’t a factor here

I am very familiar with using a PC at tv and its benefits as at home I have two HTPCs so I know the pros and cons there very well with the first set up.

My concern is the google Chrome cast I understand the concept of them but have never used one in practice. Are they reliable as a solution for users to take their laptop in to the room and present off that broadcasting to the Chromecast plugged into the tv ?

is there lag?

What about funky software that needs to be set up ?

Are they Reliable for using to screen cast from their windows PC to this device or should I go with a PC ? I want something that is Rock Solid and I feel a PC would be a better choice but do not know enough about the Chrome cast to know if it really is a viable solution

Thoughts,and suggestions are very welcomed!

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Go with the stick PC. Chromecast requires their mobile device to have the app installed and for them to understand how to use it. a stick PC will provide them with a Windows/Office environment they are familiar with. Otherwise, they will be struggling with how to show a slideshow from their device, since the Chromecast has no interface of it’s own. If you want, do both, the Chromecast is only $35, and let them decide.

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Will the presenters bring their own laptops into the room or will they just bring a thumb drive with their data on it? Reason I ask is because you can get a wireless HDMI adapter to stream video wirelessly to the TV for a relatively low cost. Lag is minimum and simple to set up. This of course will only work if they bring their own laptops into the meeting room. Otherwise, I’d go with the Intel stick.

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Your familiarity is irrelevant when it comes to other people using it. That’s great if you can support either choice, but you want a choice that you won’t have to support because the users will be able to figure it out. You need to get an idea of what your users can use.

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The Mention of my familiarity was to mostly steer the conversation into discussing the Google Chromecast and its benefits/disadvantages. Not necessarily the PC.

But you brought up a good point…

The particular conference room will almost entirely be used by the executive staff with them I would suppose doing most of the presenting. Hard to say either way if out side users will be using the conference room as well in a “presenter” role and from a IT standpoint it can be a hassle to ensure the software ( if needed ) is installed on the lap top as opposed to the familiarity of using a windows environment.

I would assume there is software needed to install on their windows laptops to set this up to screen cast from their desktop to the Chrome cast. As I said I know very little about how the chrome cast particulars work beyond its obviously what it does.

Does Chrome cast require their mobile device if they will be screen sharing from their PC ?

How reliable is this set up using a chromecast as a whole ? Is there lag etc ?

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There’s a Chrome extension that allows for casting of your entire screen or a particular tab from Chrome. The lag isn’t terrible for me. You can also buy the Chromecast ethernet adapter for even less lag.

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Chromecast is good for home/smb use. If this is for an exec boardroom I wouldn’t deploy it

Just to throw another option out there, check out this device by Actiontec . Intel was using it in their booth at spiceworld and it looked very user friendly to use and reliable

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I would probably go for the stick PC if reliability is what you are worried about. We have a Chromecast that we connect to for our morning meeting, and it can be finicky. Sometimes it won’t connect, other times it can be really laggy when trying to cast from another wireless device. Wired devices are more reliable. It works fine about 95% of the time though.

Having a small PC will allow them to use Windows like they are used to, and gives you more options in the future if you need to. Chromecast is good for quick and dirty (cheap) casting, but it probably shouldn’t be the primary device for presentations and meetings. It requires additional training, even for something simple as casting your screen. Plus, you may have some outside sales people come in to present, and they will need training as well. You will probably get tons of support calls, and it’s just not worth it if you ask me.

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Honestly, I would take starg33ker’s idea. Take the computing out of the equation and just use a wireless video adapter hooked up to their own laptop. The intel compute stick ties your user input to the TV, unless you get a wireless mouse/keyboard to use with it, which adds more expense and the need to track the items.

Compute sticks are also ‘nifty tech stuff’ that are easy to disappear into someone’s pocket unfortunately.

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In our meeting room we have a PC (with wireless keyboard & mouse) hooked up to a big TV and it works well. That said, people always come in and want to use their own laptop to present so I’m thinking of adding a Chromecast and let them choose…

Bill

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