Siemens Sells Skype Adapters For Wireless Phones

prostoalex writes "In a recent Slashdot story on Skype CEO interview some comments expressed displeasure with the fact that you have to be tied up to your computer to make those VOIP calls via Skype. Not anymore - this adapter from Siemens plugs into the USB port of the computer and allows Siemens Gigaset S645, Gigaset S440/445 or Gigaset C340/345 phone models to use the Skype connection instead of landline. News.com has the story."

Comments

really missed the point

[frovingslosh]

I think they really missed the point. What the educated user wants is a box that you plug your phone into one end, and that you plug the other end into your Ethernet router. Not something that you have to plug into a USB port on a computer.

Heck, at almost no extra cost it could even include a small router(that could be disabled), so if the customer doesn't already have a router they just plug their computer into the box rather than the other way around. This just makes sense on so many levels, where as using a USB connection through a computer (and the required software that must go along with it) is really ugly.

Re:This is a story?

[Zorilla]

- Inflexible: only supports 8khz 8-bit audio.

This one is debatable - when I call my parents over Skype and they use their Pentium 3 machine, the calls are lower quality, probably around 8 kHz, but when they use their much faster laptop, the calls are a much nicer 44 kHz. Since Skype handles most configuration itself (validating their "it just works" attitude), I can only assume it's dropping the sample rate because the slower computer can encode fast enough.