One of the staple activities that any business entity undertakes on a regular basis is the holding of a meeting. The reasons for meetings vary; e.g., discussion of reports, presentation of concepts, issue resolution, etc. Invariably, these meetings require the use of documents to assist in the discussion. When the meeting is between 2 to 3 people, hard copy documents will suffice, but when there are more participants, it is more effective to have everyone viewing just one document so that the interaction is specific to one part of the document.

Huddling around a document is one way to do this. However, it does become quite a task. That is why the multimedia projector is fast becoming part of the standard office equipment of most businesses, large and small. Having a multimedia projector in the office did not use to be so common a few years ago. In fact, it was even considered to be excessive to have one. The early versions were very bulky (some were big enough to fit into a standard check-in suitcase. Some actually even came with one!), difficult to set-up (fickle mindedness seemed to be a design consideration, i.e., you could not just connect it to any medium), required that the venue be completely dark, and cost as much as your boss’s annual salary in terms of acquisition as well as maintenance. The bulb alone, which is almost guaranteed to get busted when the number of hours stated in the manual occurs, probably costs more than all your lights in the office! As a result, only large organizations could actually afford the investment. Smaller organizations had to content themselves with primitive devices like the whiteboard marker, or the traditional overhead projector (a device that projects the content of a hardcopy document printed on transparent film (modern versions can now display documents printed on plain paper). The use of multimedia projectors then was not really considered cost-effective. The days of the prehistoric multimedia projector, however, are over. Thanks to the new technologies used in designing and manufacturing them, multimedia projectors are now much, much smaller, lighter, project brighter, media-friendlier, (you can connect it to almost any computer or media player. There are even models that do not even require separate equipment! All you need is your disc or flash drive), easier (and, of course, cheaper) to maintain and, most importantly, cost a mere fraction of what their ancestors used to cost. This rise in technological superiority and fall in investment has accelerated the availability of a multimedia projector in almost every business, both large and small which, as a result, has made interaction in meetings more focused, efficient and productive. There are several suppliers of multimedia projectors (both in brick-and-mortar and online stores) that you can choose from so be sure that before you purchase one, you check out a few of them and ask as many questions as you want so that your purchase is an informed one. They will only be too happy to assist you.