Macromedia Breeze 5

Lastly, all meeting room activity can be recorded - a useful touch. It allows you to search all participants' comments at a later date, and saves anyone being nominated to take minutes, even if they're the last to turn up.

Breeze certainly isn't cheap. It primarily works on a service rental model, so most users won't buy anything outright. The most cost-effective option for first timers is $375 (about £206) a month for up to five concurrent users. And yes, it's charged in dollars.

There's a pay-as-you-go option, pricing meetings per-minute on the basis of how many participants are taking part, but at 32 cents (18p) per minute per participant, a one-hour meeting for a presenter and four attendees will set you back $96 (£53). This is still going to be cheaper than having remote participants travel to a central location and claim back their tickets, but it's a large enough sum to focus the mind and make sure your meetings don't overrun.

These lower-usage service plans can be paid for using a credit card, but annual subscriptions and software licences, which carry a guide price of £15,000 and allow you to host the Breeze back-end on your own server, must be paid through a purchase order after arranging a price with a Macromedia sales representative. When you get to this level, they'll happily take pounds sterling.

Breeze 5 certainly feels smoother and more extensive than its previous incarnation, but it isn't something in which you should invest on the basis of its excellent features alone. Only careful analysis of the potential savings will reveal whether the service costs can be both justified and sustained.

Author: Nik Rawlinson