Conferencing Features:  

The program itself has a fairly rich feature set and, given its direct compatibility with other Microsoft products, makes demonstrations using PowerPoint and meetings in which Excel documents fairly easy. But, as for widespread compatibility with multiple platforms and browsers, Microsoft Live Meeting is somewhat limited.

Presentation/Demonstration Features:  

Compatibility aside, Microsoft Live Meeting does give users, both audiences and presenters, a variety of tools to annotate, mark, collaborate and participate, including user polls and feedback indicators. Hosts can extend controls to designated attendees and can exert control over video, voice and chat privileges at all times.

With its seamless integration with other Microsoft products like Outlook, meetings can be organized and executed almost instantly. And, with Microsoft Live Meeting’s Audio-Video Tuning Wizard, syncing audio and video feeds is, actually, impressively simple, albeit computer platform, its language and the browser itself can be problematic.

Audio/Video Features:  

Microsoft Live Meeting manages to remain in-line with advances in telecommunications, such as VoIP, and provides an impressive degree of integration between various webcam and video players and different modes of voice communication.

Microsoft Live Meeting has improved upon previous versions, particularly in regards to recording and playback. In the 2005 version, PowerPoint slides were not displayed in recordings. Microsoft has also expanded its text and media file format compatibility. In previous versions, .csv formatted reports were rendered incoherently in Chinese and other language characters. This problem, however, has been corrected in the current 2007 version.

Security Features:  

Microsoft offers end-to-end 128-bit AES encryption for all web conference meetings and white paper references, making it secure and seamless. However, despite its security measures, some improvements could be made to the program to make it more firewall friendly for presentation attendees.

Help/Support:  

Microsoft has a variety of training courses and tutorial videos, knowledgebases and FAQ sections for Microsoft Live Meeting Users. The program itself has a fairly comprehensive built-in help section, greatly reducing the need to seek help externally via the official site. The site itself, however, is not a dedicated one. Those seeking information for a certain Live Meeting feature might end up with results for other Microsoft Office products.

Microsoft does provide various methods for direct contact, including instant chat, discussion forums, telephone assistance and a comment portal for feedback and inquiries.

Microsoft Office has been an integral part of the workplace for more than a decade. Yet, while the concept of a Microsoft web conferencing program integrated with other Office should be appealing, others, like Adobe Connect Pro, have managed to this, too, and, some would argue, even better than Microsoft.