Dead may be an exaggeration. Let's just say Netmeeting has been pushed into a comfortable, though somewhat sudden, retirement.
Microsoft has announced that Netmeeting will be replaced by Office Live Meeting, aka, Placeware.
I've been using Netmeeting for several years now for training purposes. It's simple and reliable. But there's no question it has been looking a bit long in the tooth lately, and the requirement for a conferencing server to accomodate over 8 connections is limiting, to say the least. Since Microsoft's purchase of Placeware in April 2003, I was wondering what their plans were for Netmeeting. Obviously that question has been answered!
I worked with Placeware a few years back, and was very impressed with it, but at the time they didn't offer a "pay as you go" option, which WEBEX DID offer. So for those situations where I needed more than Netmeeting could handle, I typically fell back on WEBEX. It turns out that Placeware does now offer a "pay as you go" option, so I think I'll try it out again and see what they've been up to for the past couple of years.
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