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Toshiba Adds VoIP to PCs
securitas writes "PC World/ IDG reports on the new Toshiba SoftIPT SoftPhone software that turns Windows XP-based computers into VoIP telephones. The software features call answering and forwarding, voice mail retrieval and conference calling and costs $200. Now if only Toshiba managed to come up with a version of the software that runs on 802.11 WiFi handhelds like the e800/e805 ... More details in the press release."
Details here.
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Ahead, the makers of Nero, have created an IP phone for the PC. It's called Sippstar and you can get a free 2 month demo.
I was using it to talk to a friend on his Cisco IP phone. Took up a bit of bandwidth (8K/sec in both directions) but the quality was fairly good.
Or you could use X-Lite, Gnophone, SJphone, or Diax. All of which are completely free. Add about $15 / month for IConnectHere or VoicePulse account with a phone number and you're done.
-matt
As one might expect, the press release is a bunch of marketing crap, utterly lacking in tech specs. Still, it leaves me wondering how this software will compare to Cisco's Windows-based Softphone. At my company, we tried it out on our laptops, while also using their hardware 7960G. The hardware phone was consistently superior, as the SoftPhone took huge resources to run (you could barely run other apps with it up and dialing). I still use the hardware phone from home today, in conjunction with a company-managed IP telephony gateway, calling folks over a VPN as well as calling others nationwide. Call quality is pretty solid, although only after a lot of mystery codec installation by our IT admin. I also use Vonage at home, and it's clearly better than both Cisco solutions (although it also uses a Cisco ATA 186 analog-to-VoIP adapter).
RW
As far as leaving your computer on, with an IP phone you don't need to, but they cost anywhere from $70 to $500 per phone. And there are services such as IConnectHere and VoicePulse, which both will give you a real phone number and connect you to non-voip phone numbers. I think with VoicePulse for something like $25 a month you get a real phone number, voicemail, callerID and all of that, and 600 minutes of US calls per month. IMHO that's a pretty good price.
BTW, I think VoicePulse uses a bunch of Linux boxes running Asterisk to handle the calls.
-matt
My cell phone has free long distance so often it is more convienent then a computer based solution.
And, when I tried it a couple years back, the lag was terrible causing a broken conversation. I fully admit that the experience has spoiled me a bit on the idea and in time, I'm sure I'll give it another go. Hopefully, the technology will mature into a usable service for the home user. I want to say my upload speeds (or those of the person I was calling) is the source of the lag but that is pure guesswork.
GnuPhone. Sister project to Asterisk.
Already here, well, you need some speciality hardware, but it's already here.
I'll stick with my POTS tho, pls nod thanx. It never has any problems, I've yet to see a VoIP service that can match it on anything other than price in my area.
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If I read this right its jut for the softphone not for the sevice that will make it work on top of that. If all you want is the soft phone, there are plenty of freeware ones available with the same featues. I've used X-Lite in the past and found it to not suck.
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NB: I haven't tried one of these devices myself.
If anyone cared to look at the specs for the e800/e805, you will see that there is VoIP software included in ROM. Check out their PDF document at Toshiba.
This in addition to Asterisk on a linux box would probably do what he's asking for (Asterisk for the VOIP part).
Something like this does exist. See www.asterisk.org
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