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Skype Vs. SIPphone - VoIP Compared
JimLynch writes "There are few organizations more loathed than the telephone company. Let's face it - none of us like forking over our hard-earned cash every month just to use the phone. Well, how much would it be worth to you to be able to call your friends and family for free by using the Internet? ExtremeTech have compared the two newest ways to call friends via the Internet: The SIPphone from Lindows' Michael Robertson vs. the Skype service from the developers of Kazaa."
I don't know about you guys, but I pay more for my cable connection than for my my phone service (as I'm sure many of you DSL users do). It aint anywhere near free, but it'd be nice to consolidate services.
Can I bum a sig?
There are few organizations more loathed than the telephone company.
MPAA, RIAA, Telemarketers, car mechanics, McDonald's, DigitalConvergence, SCO, Microsoft, ???
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
The problem I have with stories like this is that the calls aren't really free. You do have to have a rather high-speed internet connection to make these calls with any reasonable quality and reliability, and you have to pay that fee on top of your existing phone charges.
A major limitation is that you can only call your fiends who use the same "service". And they are for the most part defining "service" rather loosely, they're more like applications in software and hardware than a service. I know it's only on Mac now, but I'm curious why iChatAV from Apple is excluded from these types of comparisons. It does the same things, plus video and uses the AOL screen name
and buddy list infrastructure.
There's a reliability issue with VoIP, I for one will not cut my dial tone off until I have nearly 100% uptime on my net connection. In all my life I think there was one time (after a hurricane) that I picked up my telephone and did not hear a dial tone. I can't count how many minutes per month/year my net connection is down for one reason or another.
I also take issue with the statement "...They do illustrate, however, just how far VOIP has come - it's actually good enough to offer a viable alternative to existing phones.". I don't think it's the VoIP technology that's improved, I think it's the Internet's infrastructure that's improved. There's finally enough bandwidth that you don't need a lot of buffering to ensure packet delivery order to the audio decoders.
It's still possible and routine to get out-of-order delivery, but no-where as severe as it was even just two years ago.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Skype - Actually not bad. They've got a nice "NO SPYWARE" logo on their download screen which actually set off alarm bells initially. But we started using it a couple of days ago to teleconference with a friend in Korea (or is that Corea now?) and I haven't noticed any new spyware on my system (and I went looking).
Ad Aware doesn't seem to find anything either. Don't count on that being there forever, but my suspicion is that they won't bother with the spyware while the product is still in Beta. They need nerds like us to test the stuff and the last thing they need is SkypeLite coming out while Skype is still a Beta product.
My now-wife and I were talking using VoIP almost 3 years ago
Maybe it's time you two meet face to face ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
They claim Skype has no feedback/echo cancellation and that you need to use either a headset or at least headphones - this is simply not true.
I have used Skype a lot with a 4 speaker setup around me and a free standing desk mic, and I get absolutely *no* feedback or echo, nor does the person I am chatting with. I'd consider it one of Skype's best features in fact. I can sit here and chat totally hands free, and it sounds nicer than your average speakerphone too.
Let's face it - none of us like forking over our hard-earned cash every month just to use the phone
Hahahaha. What an entitlement complex? You expect someone to hand you phone service for free? Along with your free cable, free rent, and free groceries?
I personally *like* handing over my hard-earned cash for phone service, along with everything else. I choose what I want, I pay for it - it's called capitalism.
If I didn't want it, I wouldn't pay for it.
Myself and many of my friends use Free World Dialup and Cisco ATA's. You can use any phone you want with the cisco and it is very nicely priced. Now when we want to talk we just punch the phone hands free and talk for hours at a time. The clarity is as good if not better than a regular connection.
We have been doing this for nearly a year now, we all laugh about the amount of money we would be spending (but are not) on a pots connection.
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