Xander ,'Selfless'
Got a question about technology? Ask it here. Discussion of hardware, software, TiVos, multi-region DVDs, Windows, Macs, LINUX, hand-helds, iPods, anything tech related. Better than any helpdesk!
I used to use VOIP as my primary phone and it was fine. You have to make sure to set up the 911 address info, but other than that it was fine. Now we're just using the mobile phones though.
I am Liese. We still have VOIP service through our cable company (because the Triple Play is cheaper than cable/internet alone), but we only use that line when DH has to do a phone interview at home.
We use VOIP though Vonage. It was a little rough when we started using it, but it has been rock solid the last couple of years.
We use VOIP through Vonage too. It was awful at first, has improved a lot. I'm still getting the occasional echo, and some occasional crackling. The "Vonage Device" (a router) should be set up 4 feet away from the modem, and no cords should cross from the modem to the router, or from the router to the telephone. It's not quite set up like that here (it's on my to-do list!). If you use bittorrent or other file sharing software, there are usually conflicts and the call quality goes down when the file sharing is actually happening. Thankfully, I can now understand their CSRs and they always follow up quickly on any problems.
Yeah, Vonage will degrade if you are soaking up a lot of bandwidth with other stuff while you use it. The cable VOIP service in our area reserves an amount of bandwidth for VOIP so Internet usage won't degrade the connection. For us, I consider this a plus for Vonage since we have full bandwidth for the Internet the 99% of the time we aren't using VOIP.
Canceling Vonage was a complete nightmare experience for me, so that's something to be aware of if it doesn't work out. (Though it's certainly possible that they've improved both call quality AND customer service in the 2+ years since I dealt with them.)
How have people found voice quality on Skype? (Not that you would use it as primary - but in voice only mode to land and cell lines, how do people find it?)
skype - great audio quality for me.
I use Connect 360 with my Mac to stream Ahemed TV to my living room TV. It's awesome.
Ahemed TVhuh? what is that?
Omnis, board policy is that we don't talk directly about television gotten from non-mainstream sources nor link to those sources. Hence "ahem."
Apple killed the 160GB iPod.