Reviewed: InFocus Mondopad — cooler than a refrigerator

Tired of getting up for the “red eye”? Sick of flying to London as your luggage heads off to Kazakhstan or being frisked by uniformed strangers of questionable intent? If the fear of DVT (deep vein thrombosis) has driven you to buy a couple of pairs of pressure socks, then you need to stay at the office more. Think video conference!

Thankfully, InFocus has recently launched their own version of a tablet. Unlike the fruit producers of thin, slim, hip and trendy, the Monopod is a big, bright piece of eye candy. It’s an interactive boardroom touchscreen that brings multi-touch capabilities to video conferencing and presentations, this elegant, wireless, friendly giant is a winner.

In a world where communication is changing as quickly as a chameleon changers colours on a Smarties box, this multi–tasker has it all. An elegant multi-touch, hi definition 55-inch (almost 140cm), full HD 1080 display provides the backdrop for a unit with built in Windows PC, full version Microsoft Office, business–class video conferencing and a touch surface with digital interactive whiteboard and document annotation capabilities.

In fact, so impressive is the “Mondo”, it was voted as the “Cool Product of the Year” at the Oregon TechAwards back in May. Sponsored by the technology trade group TechAmerica, the award is “presented to the company that has developed, and/or introduced a cool product sometime in the most recent 18 months, and had a significant demonstrable success in the past 12 months.”

Chat to the boss from your cave

If you already have video conferencing kit, the Mondopad can fit in with your existing system. You can simply add the unit as a SIP endpoint on your video conference server or service. You can also install the desktop client onto Mondopad for your existing video conferencing system, just like you would a PC… If you don’t own a video conferencing system, then the Mondopad, along with its partner Vidtel, is your answer and a far less expensive and more versatile option than a lot of conventional systems. Vidtel’s cloud–based service eliminates video islands (us and one other scenario), so you can connect to almost any video conferencing platform, from free consumer video conferencing applications (such as GoToMeeting, WebEx, Microsoft Lync and Adobe Connect) to enterprise level telepresence systems. And unlike Missions Impossible’s Ethan Hunt, you won’t have to achieve lofty heights to access highly complicated messages which you then have to eat, to make the Mondopad work. Make like the Groot Krokodil – if you can point a finger, you can use the Mondopad.

Sharing is caring

The whole point of the Mondopad is its wireless connectivity. When it comes to presentations, sharing documents is a breeze. You can access any of the information on the screen via the Mondopad’s View/Share folder, which anyone in the meeting can hook into. So too are you able to email documents direct to the Mondopad and all the usual list of suspects are supported i.e. PowerPoint, PDF, JPG’s, Word and Excel.

Better still, even if you clock in sick (you can clock in sick?), you can still be part of the presentation or videocon meeting. Yup folks, from the warmth of your bed, and with the aid of your office’s secure network, the Mondopad’s Wi-Fi wizardry, and your PC, tablet or smartphone, you too can leave your colleagues astounded by your PJ’s. As a remote participant, you can see everything on the Mondopad via a web page served by the Mondopad and the cloud based videoconferencing connection for “any – to – any” protocol.  Mondopad supports Android and iPhone.

Good idea — write it down!

Feel a brainstorm coming on?  Don’t lose any of those heady marketing ideas to scraps of paper. Your Mondopad acts as one savvy device for capturing all your notes and ideas. The unit comes with a complete set of writing and drawing tools, pens, highlighters and writing options. The Mondo allows you to save all your meeting notes and drawings as well as facilitating mailing them directly to recipients — all at the flick of a finger.  And if you need to get a couple of branch offices involved, provided you are on the same network, you can facilitate a multi–party whiteboard session.

This is a world of Inspector Gadget meeting Captain Crayon — you can underline, circle, cross out, tick, highlight and erase. And then save it all and or email it. It’s brilliant.

Hook me up Scotty

The Mondopad has all the usual connectivity features and boasts six USB A ports, HDMI, VGA, component, S-Video, composite, RS232, RCA stereo audio x 2, 3.5mm stereo mini-jack and a USB to touch screen controller board. It also features a multi-touch touch screen system with support for 2 touch and Windows 7 gesturing. It features 2 x 10W stereo speakers which is quite significant and gives you ample grunt to be able to hear easily over the fan’s 32dBA noise output.  Accessories include a wireless keyboard, wireless mouse, cleaning cloth, VGA cable, USB cable, WLAN antennas (2), security screws, security screw removal tool (good grief – don’t leave it lying around, whatever you do!), power cord, remote, sound bar assembly, HD camera assembly and foot assembly.

In all, this is one cool customer. You could do worse than try it out for size. But watch out for frostbite.