The November 2008 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine carried a review article by Yours Truly that gave a five stars thumbs up to ClearOne Communications’ CHAT 50, enterprise-class personal conferencing phone.

 

The CHAT 50 looks like the baby brother of their 3-microphone CHAT 150 that connects to most major enterprise phone models (Avaya (News - Alert) 2400, 4600, and 9600; Cisco 7940, 7960, and 7970, etc.), capable of instantly transforming them into high-performance conference phones. The philosophy being the CHAT 50 is to take ClearOne’s (News - Alert) excellent hands-free, full-duplex, echo cancelling technology and imbue it into a small, portable device for habitual travelers and road warriors who own laptops, Macs, iPods, MP3 players, PCs and cell phones.

 

And now, ClearOne has begun shipping the CHAT 170, pictured below, said to be the industry’s first speakerphone optimized for those small groups who use Microsoft (News - Alert) Office Communicator 2007, which is Microsoft’s unified communications platform (ClearOne is a Certified Partner in the Microsoft Partner Program).

 

The CHAT 170 easily connects via USB to PCs or laptops and delivers true plug-and-play operation, requiring no software or drivers to be installed. The device replaces the speakers and microphone of the PC or laptop with a high-quality, hands-free solution, perfect for crystal-clear audio conferencing for small groups, which presents user with a much better audio option for voice and video calls, allowing them the freedom to communicate without being tethered to the computer by a headset cable.

 

The product also contains ClearOne’s HDConference suite of advanced audio processing technologies. Originally developed for professional conferencing systems, HDConference produces clear audio through technologies such as Distributed Echo Cancellation, noise cancellation, full-duplex audio, first microphone priority, adaptive modeling, and others.