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Phones And Skype Get Together
An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a look at some of the interesting gadgets that will be available for purchase now that Skype has published instructions on how to build the service into phones." From the article: "We saw one other innovative product at CES that is definitely worth a Skype addict's consideration. The Skype Wi-Fi phone, coming this March from Netgear, is basically a Skype cell phone. It connects to any wireless network, letting users make Skype calls completely unconnected to a PC or phone line. If it works as well as it appeared to when Netgear CEO Patrick Lo demonstrated it during a press conference by calling Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, the little service from Luxembourg will have officially escaped from the confines of the personal computer."
More about the phone (including a link to a large, print-quality image) can be seen at Netgear's site: http://tools.netgear.com/skype/
You mean like:
http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/
or
http://www.vocera.com/ (star trek - like)
or
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/ZyXEL+P2000W
All are wifi SIP phones and work well with Asterisk
http://www.22balmoralroad.net/ http://www.tinynetworks.co.uk/
Skype under linux completely sucks. It seems after ebay took over skype, they chucked out the support for linux so much so that it doesnt work at all. Check this out http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=32290&sid=8 0e30a3a5027922776d84bb7906d8bf1
Skype, wake me up when you have fixed the audio bug, otherwise go to the DOGS
I keep seeing comments that Skype is "Luxembourg-based". Skype's legal headquarters are (were, pre-Ebay?) based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, but just about nothing else is as far as I understood it. Estonians wrote the code, and it's touted as a big success story in Estonia. The co-founders are a Swede and a Dane. Newsweek might see minimal legal headquarters as being the basis to call it its base, but from a Slashdot readership's perspective, you'd think you'd want to know where the developers are, and what they're doing now.
It's probably safest to say "EU-based". But I think Estonia at least needs a nod.
Haven't seen much mention of this so far.
These wireless handsets, as has been previously pointed out, have been available for SIP networks for quite some time, along with decent wired handsets which also don't require a PC to be switched on. One good (albeit expensive) wireless SIP phone is the Hitachi WIP-5000 which has regular firmware updates including support for new features like WPA.
The main drawback with most of these phones, though, is not just the lack of support for new security standards like WPA (many, like the skype phone, support WEP only). The biggest problem, at least here in the UK (I dunno if it's different elsewhere), is that most of the wi-fi hotspot providers do not run encryption at all. Instead, they have an open network but require you to login through a webpage, in order to bill you. This technology is fine for laptops and PDAs with web browsers but makes such phones utterly useless* except when you're at home or you're lucky enough to have a workplace which supports standard wi-fi.
I'm sure someone will come up with a wifi sip phone with a browser eventually (Nokia's new E-series supports wi-fi, so that's promising) but, at the moment, the handsets are very expensive and not being able to use them at most UK wifi hotspots is a major drawback.
Sam.
* In theory, you could clone the MAC address to a laptop, sign in with that and then swop to the phone, but that's obviously far too much hassle for real usage.
I have an Acer N50 PDA with a 500MHz CPU and Skype really does work just fine. So does SJphone (SIP softphone) which can also make pretty good calls although seems more sensitive to weak wireless signal.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Yeah, but if you have a PocketPC based PDA, you can already run Skype on it.
No need to have a SIP service (which may/not gateway into your asterisk box).
US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not