Don't spout FUD. If someone is actually suited by using a Mac Mini server, they would be totally fine with the lowest tier Windows Small Biz Server. Which up to a certain number of users, doesn't have CALs to pay. And don't use the excuse of factoring in cost of upgrades from version to version because OSX has the same treadmill.
If anything, a really small business should be paying for certain hostings. Good ones are inexpensive for what you get and run by professionals. When it gets to a certain size, you can run proper servers by hiring an admin and then YOU CAN USE LINUX.
I always get a kick out of people who say this. When people defend Apple by showing their value as a successful stock.
Let me ask you something. How does Apple making money hand-over-fist apparently (I've yet to actually analyze the K's and Q's; I'm just repeating typical fanboy rhetoric here), do anything for you.
Q: How does Apple make you money? A: Oh wait, it doesn't share all that money with you. It actually *took* a pretty penny from you. Lesson learned: buy AAPL stock and not it's products.
Q: How does their dropping enterprise customers out of the blue help those people who bought six figures worth of hardware? A: Oh wait, it doesn't. It's actually now forcing businesses to now begin, from scratch, a costly, infrastructure-threating new plan and deployment of other systems.
Q: How does their lack of proper hardware replacement and turnaround time help you when your server is down? A: Oh wait, they don't. People are actually panicking because instead of a HP 4 hour turnaround, it could be DAYS. Actually, if you were the one choosing this option, you've probably been fired for this boneheaded decision.
Wow. Apple has a huge market cap and huge revenues! That's great!
Dude, the parent is right. He actually tried it and saw in 5 minutes it didn't work. More people should think like him. You're probably just an armchair quarterback who hasn't even used an IPad yet but likes to rehash what the media (incorrectly) spits out about Apple products.
The guy is totally right. I read on my IPhone laying down on a couch alot. It wouldn't work with an IPad. It gets to heavy, uncomfortable, and cumbersome for more than 10 minutes of use. A netbook that you can actually rest comfortably on your lap is the preferred form factor.
It's like the example this weekend. Yesterday I went to the mall and went to see for myself if the new MacBook Air's are any good. I read all the media schill reviews (every site now is a media schill for Apple because it sells eyeballs and they also don't want to give bad reviews because Apple will cut them off/sue them and hence the revenue goes down the drain), who all wrote that while they thought it was basically "Meh"--it's still "the best apple product yet." Typical BS.
So I went myself. To see for myself. I knew it would take all of 5 minutes. And I was right. If you would just use it in person, you'd find that 5 minutes of using it in person negates hours of reading reviews because you'll find show-stoppers that will make it not worth buying.
I know it's cool and all to knock AT&T now, but c'mon guys. Think about this rationally. They're just networks. And you have other networks. Yes, we should have more competition and providers should be better for us. But you're all forgetting the simple solution, which I have done.
Sign up and test all 4 networks (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile). They all have 30-day windows where you can cancel and not be locked into a contract (T-Mobile doesn't even have a lock-in). Get it, test it in all the spots you use your phone, and see how the reception is. Drive around, test to see if you get incoming calls, *every time*. Test to see if you always get a VM immediately. Test it. It took me all of 1 hour total to do everything for each network. And when you return it, you don't even have to pay for the phone. Yes you have to pay for the month. Well just test a new network every month.
Don't you think this is a small amount of effort to avoid locking yourself into potentially having shitty cell service for an entire 2 years?
If I had listened to your advice, I wouldn't have found that AT&T in the area I live is actually the best by a significant margin (even over the "coveted" Verizon).
The one demerit I have to give AT&T, however, is on the receiving (read: my end) end, the audio quality is really poor. But it could just be the IPhone 3GS I have that has a shitty receiver. Never had any other phone on AT&T. But on the flipside, oddly enough the person on the other end says it almost sounds as good as POTS. VZ and oddly enough T-Mobile (similiar network protocol) sound infinitely better.
1) Ok, so that I understand you correctly, using your current example, I should make a 32 GB partition AND a 8 GB partition. Not a 32 GB partition and a 8 GB unpartitioned space. Correct?
2) It seems that from what you say, sometimes TRIM is still necessary. Would it be better to just make (theoretically, not taking into account normal proper partitioning schemes) a single 40 GB partition and rely on TRIM? The uses here would be being able to occasionally go over the 30 GB mark, which is useful, and not having to deal worrying about partitions. One would have to use TRIM anyways. So just schedule it to be run on recommended intervals (say best practice is every 3 mo.).
I say get rid of all complex applications on the web entirely.
I love the fact that in this day and age, web apps (HTML5, flash, etc) give the seamless auto updating features and zero install. They've spoiled us. However, I think we've forgotten one thing. That a desktop program can be leaps and bounds faster and more featureful. And the landscape has changed now so that desktop programs don't have the same cumbersome pitfalls they used to.
Example: I use a web interface for email, like many others. I love the portability and the fact that I can use my email from anywhere, on any machine. However, lately I've been using email a lot. Then it dawned on me. Goodness, a genuine desktop e-mail program (like Thunderbird, Outlook)! I forgot how efficient, fast, featureful, and quite frankly amazing using local desktop programs are (after years of using web apps).
Web apps gave us these things, but now with the always on internet, and the fact of auto-updaters for desktop apps being the norm now, maintaining desktop applications are no longer a chore (as opposed to back in the day--how many times did it annoy you to download, then uninstall, and reinstall eudora every single time a new version came out).
Imagine a well designed and coded facebook desktop program (not that I use facebook). How useful that could be. Hell I'd even pay for that. And development tools nowadays are so advanced a company could write once and easily port it to all platforms (Linux, OSX, and Windows). I mean, it's just as cumbersome to develop a rich app for all the different browsers.
Is what you said about TRIM and partitions correct? What you say makes 100% sense. However, I always assumed that it was say 10% free space of a partition. For example:
Take the 120 GB SSD you mentioned. Format it for 110 GB. Fill up that 110 GB. Yes you have technically 10 GB free for the SSD to use to write to. However, it's not part of that partition. There is no allocated 10 GB partition. So while it exists, the filessystem has nothing to write to because technically it's not partitioned.
What you say makes sense though. IMHO if your solution is correct, it would provide a simpler, more efficient, and most likely faster way to use a SSD.
Hmmm. Interesting. I didn't know that either. What a shame. I wonder if it's as simple as just buying a MBP and replacing the awful 5400 RPM HD with a new fast laptop SSD (never was a Mac user). I would assume though that you would have to wait a year considering Apple wouldn't honor the warranty if you opened up your system.
The article if I recall was the fact that the MBP's used a Sata 150, which bottlenecked the SSD. This is unlike most Windows laptops that have a 7200 RPM HD which use Sata 300.
I thought it was in an article a while back that while the SSD was faster, a MacBook's HD controller wasn't. So the effect of a SSD is pretty much nil.
Not so fast on OSX. Don't know why people keep saying that they will get rid of OSX. If you look at the most recent financial statement, Macs deliver pretty much 40% of their money. It's a tie between IPhone and Macs. IPods are like the only remaining big chunk, and they're miniscule in comparison to the two.
Amen. I just can't get over the hubris of the student, or the flamebaitedness of/., or the constant stupid knocking of Ballmer.
I'll pose a rebuttal to the 2 points made:
1. I think Ballmer actually gave a great answer. The real world and the business world doesn't work like some obscure tech blog thinks it does. He actually gave a thoughtful, intelligent, accurate answer, and an answer that a person successful at the business it would give. That's the problem. Everyone is reading the excerpt that trashes Ballmer and rehashes it. If one actually listened to the video of the answer, I was like whoa, why does everyone think he's an idiot? And the funny thing is this happened a few months ago. He did an interview for Engadget. The interviewer had the nerve to constantly knock him on stage. His answers were so intelligent, accurate, and spot on, but yet no one ever finds that out because they just like to rehash sound bytes. In the end, no matter what/., Ballmer actually is pretty darn good and smart. Let's see you all build and run one of the most successful companies in the history of the world, and be worth, what is he at, $9 billion? Listen to the entire video, sit down, relax, and listen to it word for word from the perspective of the business world. And I love that it was knocked as an MBA type answer. News for people: in the real world, MBAs run companies, not armchair tech quarterbacks on computer blogs. And more than you think. Even if the CEO and founder is XYZ, he has an actual MBA running all the accounting, finance, and operations that REALLY makes the business work.
2. I instantly skipped over the Techcrunch snippet. That guy is a blowhard who really runs a rinky-dink company but makes himself out to be shit's ice cream. I don't even entertain a small-time failed businessman's opinion. Although she isn't the posterchild as a good example, I loved Carol Bartz's reply to the guy a few months ago. Something along the lines of, "You run some small time blog, I run a multi-billion dollar company, so f*%! off," or the like. It was perfect.
Typical slashdot pedantic jerk. No wonder you post frequently here--as you've demonstrated, you aren't successful in real world social situations because you lack any sort of skills there.
Anyway, my purpose wasn't even to add up the math. As a side note, I didn't even think to give the real math a thought, hence the disregard for an accurate calculation. My point, jerk, was to demonstrate that futility in the matter. One does all that work for what? How much does he actually make for the effort? I can't imagine anything decent at all.
Why does this guy even bother. If 1 in 30 he can make a markup on, how much can this guy be making? $20-50 per day, if he's lucky. He probably spends all day doing it and probably makes $5k per year if he's lucky.
I thought that too. So I tested it on Skype, Fring, and then Acrobits Softphone. All different clients and even different protocols. No luck though.
The only possibility I can think of is either a sub-par mic on the 3GS (and please Slashdotters I'm not flaming the 3GS here--maybe the reason is simply because the mic is optimized for the cell phone codec and not the higher quality VoIP codecs), or maybe you have noise cancellation on your Android phone and that produces clarity on a codec that takes in more quality and hence more ambient noise. Do you have noise cancellation on your phone?
Please mod parent up. This is probably the most informative post in this thread.
Although I have to disagree with you about calling over a cell phone. Maybe your Android phone has a better mic (I have an IPhone). But I find with my 3GS calls sound very unclear for the receiver, and you can't make out most words. When I fire up VoIP on my computer with a headset, however, they sound clearer than a landline amazingly.
How do you address the issue of a VoIP for the receiver being too loud? It seems the codec is so clear that it comes across loud. I can't seem to fix it. Note: I connect my headset via the sound card analog ports, not via USB. I use Linux so I didn't feel like dealing with not having proper USB drivers for it or any configuration whatsoever. At this point I want to use VoIP as my primary line, but the listeners always complain it's so loud it's blaring.
The U.S. Skype charges $34 per year for outgoing calls to POTS/Cell, and $16 per year to get a number and the ability to receive incoming calls from POTS/Cell.
I know that typically SIP providers offer a telephone number and the ability to receive calls for free, but I haven't found one that hasn't charged less than $20/mo. for unlimited calling *out* to POTS/Cells. I call too much to pay by the minute.
Of course you can use that Google Voice trick to call out for free, but I find it's more trouble than it's worth.
Amen. And it's very unreliable, as least for consumer level stuff. I used Fring with Sipgate and it is just so unreliable it's incredible. Half the time can't log in. Logs me out unexpectedly. Crappy connections. Doesn't always pick up. Etc.
Skype works every time, rarely a bad call connection, and flawlessly on any device (smartphone and PC). I just wish there was some sort of adapter that exists so I can connect a regular portable phone to my computer somehow so I can roam around the house, because using Skype on an IPhone 3GS sounds like crap to the listener.
What SIP providers do you recommend? I'd like to know, as I have yet to find any SIP provider beat Skype for unlimited phone calling (SkypeIn + SkypeOut) price. Skype is like $65 or $70 per year.
Plus I don't want to sit in front of a computer. Skype on my smartphone is pretty good. And for iOS I've yet to find a reliable, good SIP app. Also too, I'd like a real phone, but there is no point in using SIP to save money if the only SIP phones around are like $150-200.
What SIP providers do you recommend? I'd like to know, as I have yet to find any SIP provider beat Skype for unlimited phone calling (SkypeIn + SkypeOut) price. Skype is like $65 or $70 per year.
VoIP or Skype on a cell isn't necessarily the best solution. My findings with using the two extensively:
- Unusable voice quality while driving. To many breakups, jitter, total silence for like 30 sec - Same for using it over 3G, even in an area with great coverage - Performs great on wifi via cell but only if within very close range to one's router - Voice quality using it on a PC with a headset/microphone is vastly superior than using Skype via cell; via cell isn't clear enough, yet doesn't filter out background noise so it's tougher to understand
In theory using voip for everything seems grand. But...
If you don't talk alot, using Skype to supplement your minutes is fine. But if you talk alot or use the cell for business, whatever the telco does for voice codec/network optimization they do, one is better off getting unlimited minutes or getting more minutes. The quality when mobile and not tethered to wifi is superior.
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Don't spout FUD. If someone is actually suited by using a Mac Mini server, they would be totally fine with the lowest tier Windows Small Biz Server. Which up to a certain number of users, doesn't have CALs to pay. And don't use the excuse of factoring in cost of upgrades from version to version because OSX has the same treadmill.
If anything, a really small business should be paying for certain hostings. Good ones are inexpensive for what you get and run by professionals. When it gets to a certain size, you can run proper servers by hiring an admin and then YOU CAN USE LINUX.
Friends don't let friends use OSX as a server.
I always get a kick out of people who say this. When people defend Apple by showing their value as a successful stock.
Let me ask you something. How does Apple making money hand-over-fist apparently (I've yet to actually analyze the K's and Q's; I'm just repeating typical fanboy rhetoric here), do anything for you.
Q: How does Apple make you money?
A: Oh wait, it doesn't share all that money with you. It actually *took* a pretty penny from you. Lesson learned: buy AAPL stock and not it's products.
Q: How does their dropping enterprise customers out of the blue help those people who bought six figures worth of hardware?
A: Oh wait, it doesn't. It's actually now forcing businesses to now begin, from scratch, a costly, infrastructure-threating new plan and deployment of other systems.
Q: How does their lack of proper hardware replacement and turnaround time help you when your server is down?
A: Oh wait, they don't. People are actually panicking because instead of a HP 4 hour turnaround, it could be DAYS. Actually, if you were the one choosing this option, you've probably been fired for this boneheaded decision.
Wow. Apple has a huge market cap and huge revenues! That's great!
Please stop bring up the Newton. It was a novel idea. Unfortunately it sucked. I had one when it first came it. It blew.
Dude, the parent is right. He actually tried it and saw in 5 minutes it didn't work. More people should think like him. You're probably just an armchair quarterback who hasn't even used an IPad yet but likes to rehash what the media (incorrectly) spits out about Apple products.
The guy is totally right. I read on my IPhone laying down on a couch alot. It wouldn't work with an IPad. It gets to heavy, uncomfortable, and cumbersome for more than 10 minutes of use. A netbook that you can actually rest comfortably on your lap is the preferred form factor.
It's like the example this weekend. Yesterday I went to the mall and went to see for myself if the new MacBook Air's are any good. I read all the media schill reviews (every site now is a media schill for Apple because it sells eyeballs and they also don't want to give bad reviews because Apple will cut them off/sue them and hence the revenue goes down the drain), who all wrote that while they thought it was basically "Meh"--it's still "the best apple product yet." Typical BS.
So I went myself. To see for myself. I knew it would take all of 5 minutes. And I was right. If you would just use it in person, you'd find that 5 minutes of using it in person negates hours of reading reviews because you'll find show-stoppers that will make it not worth buying.
I know it's cool and all to knock AT&T now, but c'mon guys. Think about this rationally. They're just networks. And you have other networks. Yes, we should have more competition and providers should be better for us. But you're all forgetting the simple solution, which I have done.
Sign up and test all 4 networks (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile). They all have 30-day windows where you can cancel and not be locked into a contract (T-Mobile doesn't even have a lock-in). Get it, test it in all the spots you use your phone, and see how the reception is. Drive around, test to see if you get incoming calls, *every time*. Test to see if you always get a VM immediately. Test it. It took me all of 1 hour total to do everything for each network. And when you return it, you don't even have to pay for the phone. Yes you have to pay for the month. Well just test a new network every month.
Don't you think this is a small amount of effort to avoid locking yourself into potentially having shitty cell service for an entire 2 years?
If I had listened to your advice, I wouldn't have found that AT&T in the area I live is actually the best by a significant margin (even over the "coveted" Verizon).
The one demerit I have to give AT&T, however, is on the receiving (read: my end) end, the audio quality is really poor. But it could just be the IPhone 3GS I have that has a shitty receiver. Never had any other phone on AT&T. But on the flipside, oddly enough the person on the other end says it almost sounds as good as POTS. VZ and oddly enough T-Mobile (similiar network protocol) sound infinitely better.
1) Ok, so that I understand you correctly, using your current example, I should make a 32 GB partition AND a 8 GB partition. Not a 32 GB partition and a 8 GB unpartitioned space. Correct?
2) It seems that from what you say, sometimes TRIM is still necessary. Would it be better to just make (theoretically, not taking into account normal proper partitioning schemes) a single 40 GB partition and rely on TRIM? The uses here would be being able to occasionally go over the 30 GB mark, which is useful, and not having to deal worrying about partitions. One would have to use TRIM anyways. So just schedule it to be run on recommended intervals (say best practice is every 3 mo.).
I say get rid of all complex applications on the web entirely.
I love the fact that in this day and age, web apps (HTML5, flash, etc) give the seamless auto updating features and zero install. They've spoiled us. However, I think we've forgotten one thing. That a desktop program can be leaps and bounds faster and more featureful. And the landscape has changed now so that desktop programs don't have the same cumbersome pitfalls they used to.
Example: I use a web interface for email, like many others. I love the portability and the fact that I can use my email from anywhere, on any machine. However, lately I've been using email a lot. Then it dawned on me. Goodness, a genuine desktop e-mail program (like Thunderbird, Outlook)! I forgot how efficient, fast, featureful, and quite frankly amazing using local desktop programs are (after years of using web apps).
Web apps gave us these things, but now with the always on internet, and the fact of auto-updaters for desktop apps being the norm now, maintaining desktop applications are no longer a chore (as opposed to back in the day--how many times did it annoy you to download, then uninstall, and reinstall eudora every single time a new version came out).
Imagine a well designed and coded facebook desktop program (not that I use facebook). How useful that could be. Hell I'd even pay for that. And development tools nowadays are so advanced a company could write once and easily port it to all platforms (Linux, OSX, and Windows). I mean, it's just as cumbersome to develop a rich app for all the different browsers.
Is what you said about TRIM and partitions correct? What you say makes 100% sense. However, I always assumed that it was say 10% free space of a partition. For example:
Take the 120 GB SSD you mentioned. Format it for 110 GB. Fill up that 110 GB. Yes you have technically 10 GB free for the SSD to use to write to. However, it's not part of that partition. There is no allocated 10 GB partition. So while it exists, the filessystem has nothing to write to because technically it's not partitioned.
What you say makes sense though. IMHO if your solution is correct, it would provide a simpler, more efficient, and most likely faster way to use a SSD.
Hmmm. Interesting. I didn't know that either. What a shame. I wonder if it's as simple as just buying a MBP and replacing the awful 5400 RPM HD with a new fast laptop SSD (never was a Mac user). I would assume though that you would have to wait a year considering Apple wouldn't honor the warranty if you opened up your system.
The article if I recall was the fact that the MBP's used a Sata 150, which bottlenecked the SSD. This is unlike most Windows laptops that have a 7200 RPM HD which use Sata 300.
I thought it was in an article a while back that while the SSD was faster, a MacBook's HD controller wasn't. So the effect of a SSD is pretty much nil.
Just fine actually. Got a 15 year old pentium 2 with mmx and a 9 year old laptop. Both hard drives still work fine.
So please, don't troll.
Not so fast on OSX. Don't know why people keep saying that they will get rid of OSX. If you look at the most recent financial statement, Macs deliver pretty much 40% of their money. It's a tie between IPhone and Macs. IPods are like the only remaining big chunk, and they're miniscule in comparison to the two.
Amen. I just can't get over the hubris of the student, or the flamebaitedness of /., or the constant stupid knocking of Ballmer.
I'll pose a rebuttal to the 2 points made:
1. I think Ballmer actually gave a great answer. The real world and the business world doesn't work like some obscure tech blog thinks it does. He actually gave a thoughtful, intelligent, accurate answer, and an answer that a person successful at the business it would give. That's the problem. Everyone is reading the excerpt that trashes Ballmer and rehashes it. If one actually listened to the video of the answer, I was like whoa, why does everyone think he's an idiot? And the funny thing is this happened a few months ago. He did an interview for Engadget. The interviewer had the nerve to constantly knock him on stage. His answers were so intelligent, accurate, and spot on, but yet no one ever finds that out because they just like to rehash sound bytes. In the end, no matter what /., Ballmer actually is pretty darn good and smart. Let's see you all build and run one of the most successful companies in the history of the world, and be worth, what is he at, $9 billion? Listen to the entire video, sit down, relax, and listen to it word for word from the perspective of the business world. And I love that it was knocked as an MBA type answer. News for people: in the real world, MBAs run companies, not armchair tech quarterbacks on computer blogs. And more than you think. Even if the CEO and founder is XYZ, he has an actual MBA running all the accounting, finance, and operations that REALLY makes the business work.
2. I instantly skipped over the Techcrunch snippet. That guy is a blowhard who really runs a rinky-dink company but makes himself out to be shit's ice cream. I don't even entertain a small-time failed businessman's opinion. Although she isn't the posterchild as a good example, I loved Carol Bartz's reply to the guy a few months ago. Something along the lines of, "You run some small time blog, I run a multi-billion dollar company, so f*%! off," or the like. It was perfect.
Typical slashdot pedantic jerk. No wonder you post frequently here--as you've demonstrated, you aren't successful in real world social situations because you lack any sort of skills there.
Anyway, my purpose wasn't even to add up the math. As a side note, I didn't even think to give the real math a thought, hence the disregard for an accurate calculation. My point, jerk, was to demonstrate that futility in the matter. One does all that work for what? How much does he actually make for the effort? I can't imagine anything decent at all.
Why does this guy even bother. If 1 in 30 he can make a markup on, how much can this guy be making? $20-50 per day, if he's lucky. He probably spends all day doing it and probably makes $5k per year if he's lucky.
Interesting. So how do you fix it so that the audio I send is of lower volume, without somehow adjusting the mic input volume?
I thought that too. So I tested it on Skype, Fring, and then Acrobits Softphone. All different clients and even different protocols. No luck though.
The only possibility I can think of is either a sub-par mic on the 3GS (and please Slashdotters I'm not flaming the 3GS here--maybe the reason is simply because the mic is optimized for the cell phone codec and not the higher quality VoIP codecs), or maybe you have noise cancellation on your Android phone and that produces clarity on a codec that takes in more quality and hence more ambient noise. Do you have noise cancellation on your phone?
Please mod parent up. This is probably the most informative post in this thread.
Although I have to disagree with you about calling over a cell phone. Maybe your Android phone has a better mic (I have an IPhone). But I find with my 3GS calls sound very unclear for the receiver, and you can't make out most words. When I fire up VoIP on my computer with a headset, however, they sound clearer than a landline amazingly.
How do you address the issue of a VoIP for the receiver being too loud? It seems the codec is so clear that it comes across loud. I can't seem to fix it. Note: I connect my headset via the sound card analog ports, not via USB. I use Linux so I didn't feel like dealing with not having proper USB drivers for it or any configuration whatsoever. At this point I want to use VoIP as my primary line, but the listeners always complain it's so loud it's blaring.
This is such a spam post. Mods, please mod the post into oblivion.
How this got through I have no idea.
The U.S. Skype charges $34 per year for outgoing calls to POTS/Cell, and $16 per year to get a number and the ability to receive incoming calls from POTS/Cell.
I know that typically SIP providers offer a telephone number and the ability to receive calls for free, but I haven't found one that hasn't charged less than $20/mo. for unlimited calling *out* to POTS/Cells. I call too much to pay by the minute.
Of course you can use that Google Voice trick to call out for free, but I find it's more trouble than it's worth.
Amen. And it's very unreliable, as least for consumer level stuff. I used Fring with Sipgate and it is just so unreliable it's incredible. Half the time can't log in. Logs me out unexpectedly. Crappy connections. Doesn't always pick up. Etc.
Skype works every time, rarely a bad call connection, and flawlessly on any device (smartphone and PC). I just wish there was some sort of adapter that exists so I can connect a regular portable phone to my computer somehow so I can roam around the house, because using Skype on an IPhone 3GS sounds like crap to the listener.
What SIP providers do you recommend? I'd like to know, as I have yet to find any SIP provider beat Skype for unlimited phone calling (SkypeIn + SkypeOut) price. Skype is like $65 or $70 per year.
Plus I don't want to sit in front of a computer. Skype on my smartphone is pretty good. And for iOS I've yet to find a reliable, good SIP app. Also too, I'd like a real phone, but there is no point in using SIP to save money if the only SIP phones around are like $150-200.
What SIP providers do you recommend? I'd like to know, as I have yet to find any SIP provider beat Skype for unlimited phone calling (SkypeIn + SkypeOut) price. Skype is like $65 or $70 per year.
VoIP or Skype on a cell isn't necessarily the best solution. My findings with using the two extensively:
- Unusable voice quality while driving. To many breakups, jitter, total silence for like 30 sec
- Same for using it over 3G, even in an area with great coverage
- Performs great on wifi via cell but only if within very close range to one's router
- Voice quality using it on a PC with a headset/microphone is vastly superior than using Skype via cell; via cell isn't clear enough, yet doesn't filter out background noise so it's tougher to understand
In theory using voip for everything seems grand. But...
If you don't talk alot, using Skype to supplement your minutes is fine. But if you talk alot or use the cell for business, whatever the telco does for voice codec/network optimization they do, one is better off getting unlimited minutes or getting more minutes. The quality when mobile and not tethered to wifi is superior.
Correction. I meant to say run a full OSX environment on my PC by just copying over the Darwin kernel.