Well, I think I was suckered.
After starting the conversation on the list about internet telephony, hoping
to find some software that would allow linux users to make PC to phone calls
like windoze users with dialpad or net2phone, I heard about Quicknet and
their telephony cards. Their website advertises the stuff as great for
PC-to-PC, PC-to-phone, and phone-to-PC calls.
Not true. In THEORY, apparently, the cards could be used for this stuff if
you are running linux, but in reality one cannot. Why? There are no
IP-to-phone gateways available that a linux-user could use. I imagine a
windoze user would have no problems but not a linux user.
I got stupid and spent money I would otherwise used to buy a good video card
and instead bought a PhoneCARD for my laptop. I had imagined that it with it
I would be able to make phonecalls to my wife, parents, friends, etc,
regardless of where I was (I am a military reservist). Not so. It is EASY
to make PC-to-PC calls (if you can get the ALPHA-level linux driver to
compile), so long as the target computer has a device or software listening
for such things. To me this is merely glorified Instant Messaging or IRC,
neither of which I have any interest or use for. I wanted to CALL people
from my PC to their PHONE, not their frickin' PC. Hell, my parents,
friend's, etc, have dialup accounts (if they have computers at all) and their
computers aren't on but a few hours a day. Their phone is ALWAYS ready to
work.
Thus, it appears that I wasted good money on a gimmicky toy. A glorified IM
device that would have been better spent on an NVIDIA graphics card.
Thus to the real point...this reinforces the need for an app that will work
with net2phone or dialpad servers and allow PC-to-phone calls. These
services are WINDOZE-ONLY, for no good reason, with dialpad being the WORST
offender since they used an open, platform-independent language (JAVA) and
planted a check within it that refuses to work if you are using ANYTHING but
a win32 system of some kind. What bullcrap! It's frickin' JAVA, damnit!
That kind of restriction is unnecessary, gratuitous, and stupid.
Quicknet hardware are all very specialized bits of equipment with no real
benefit over of decent soundcard which most people already own if they own a
computer. The equipment are merely glorified modem/soundcards, the soundcard
part being very primitive and low quality vs say, a Sounblaster Live card.
Its only real purpose is to allow netmeetings or other PC-to-PC
communications, which might be fine for a group of businesspeople, but for
Joe and Jane Blow, its useless and extravagant. A decent soundcard that has
full duplex capability will serve better than a Quicknet card - and provide
music, soundf/x, etc, on top of that.
I just want to finish with strong encouragement to the coders among you to
hack a software package that will permit normal users to make use of the
perfectly fine service that is already available to windoze users (NOT for
linux users OR Mac users) provided by net2phone and/or dialpad. We already
have the guts of the dialpad applet and hopefully soon a linux-friendly
applet will appear. Perhaps someone could reverse engineer the net2phone app
and do linux and Mac users a favor and release a client app that will permit
them to use the net2phone service as well.
In the meantime, I will be returning my PhoneCARD and getting a proper piece
of hardware: a good video card.
Unless you are REALLY into internet chat, instant messaging, and get a thrill
talking into your PC to someone on their PC, then do not spend money on
Quicknet cards. Incidently, I did finally manage to get their driver to
build but it took me a while to point out the errors in their instructions at
various levels, and their sourcecode, before it was buildable on a Mandrake
system. You have to jump through a lot of flaming hoops to get the cards to
work, and then the end is not really worth the journey.
--
Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.
