Microsoft has also beefed up its device's home-entertainment, voice-activation and videoconferencing features.
But for those who prefer to keep the technology in house, the return on investment in a top-of-the-range videoconferencing system, can be surprisingly rapid.Take HP's Halo and Cisco's TelePresence technologies, which cost up to $300,000 a pop.
Eyenetwork mentions Vodafone, which it says has used videoconferencing to save "over 13,500 flights per year...and reduce its carbon footprint by over 5,000 tonnes".Eyenetwork's business has doubled in size in the past year.
Even if American freight carriers were to copy El Al, Israel's airline, and hold goods for a day for security checks, it would not greatly erode the advantages of air freight over other means of transport.Meanwhile, executives confined to their offices are taking to audio- and videoconferencing.
These include "telemedicine", which allows doctors to monitor people's health remotely using devices in patients' homes, and high-definition videoconferencing services so that Singaporeans can keep in touch with relatives, friends and colleagues.
The latest videoconferencing equipment gives participants the impression that they are facing a bunch of people sitting round a table.Businessmen still go to great trouble and expense to get together with other businessmen and talk.
Today's remote-presence robots are crude by comparison, amounting to little more than videoconferencing on wheels.
This has now moved on to enhancing communications in new ways, he says, by integrating voice calls with videoconferencing, instant messaging, "presence" services that show whether someone is available, file transfers and other social-networking and collaboration tools.
It has diversified into other areas, such as videoconferencing, but chiefly because it thought this would increase demand for routers.
It makes up for its dearth of English-speaking teachers by contracting Filipinos who teach via videoconferencing from Manila to pupils' laptops or tablets in Montevideo.
Another application is to move terminals for videoconferencing equipment to where they are needed, allowing conversations to take place on the factory floor or walking down a corridor.Suitable Technologies, another Willow Garage spin-off, is now also selling a telepresence system, Beam, based on a sort of trundlebot.
