UC Unleashed

I’m always looking for gadgets. Especially UC related gadgets. Enter the Jabra Speak 410. This little gem is a great speakerphone for VoIP solutions like Lync and Skype. It has phenomenal clarity, is simple to use, and won’t break the bank. This small round unit uses USB, and installs automatically. LED indicators circle the unit, and show volume level and mute. Up/Down volume control, Mute, and On/Off hook buttons are all that are needed. Plus, it has a standard 1/8″ headphone jack so you can listen to calls in privacy. The attached USB cord wraps around the base, and the unit fits into a supplied zippered pouch and into your laptop bag. It’s relative small size and lightweight make it a perfect traveling unit.

Jabra 410 Speak – top

I can say, you’d be hard pressed to find fault with this unit. Its omni-directional microphone easily picks up clear audio from those in a room, whether one person or 5, and delivers great clear sound when listening to people on the other end. The built-in Digital Signal Processing (DSP) gets rid of the hiss, echoes, and other garbage that lesser units don’t. If you need a speakerphone for a small room, the Jabra 410 Speak is for you.

And it works for other things, too.

I rely on Microsoft OneNote a lot for note taking. But one problem when attending conferences and training is too much time taking notes of what people are saying, and not enough time to actually enjoy things. So I started using a small microphone plugged into my laptop to record audio as well. OneNote does great audio recording and can synchronize the audio with what you’re typing at the time. The problem is that you’re locked to whatever quality microphone you have. While reading about Jonathan McKinney’s journey through the Lync MCM rotation, I noticed he used a 410 Speak to record audio into OneNote. Sure enough, after trying it during some recent sessions, I can say, this little unit is perfect for this purpose. You get clear audio from your session speaker, and it picks up those in the room who are asking questions.

The unit also has pretty darn good audio for listening to music. While not stereo, it does a good job of playing your beats and the simple touch sensitive volume and mute buttons come in handy when the boss shows up at your cube.

The unit is available from your favorite dealers for just under $100.