just now on slashdot.org http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/business/yourmoney/05tech.html?ex=1252036800&en=8fa50cce785ea6c5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
could be worth a read - from my recall skype was okay .. I've tried a few VoIP services .. including those using the USB bolt on your phone style .. they work and work well. Hang onto hats there is going to be a LOT of development in VoIP technology by private as well as various governments about the globe. eg Japan where a decent size government dept has several billion worth to spend each year for the forseeable future on VoIP tech.
Also Linksys/Cisco are bring out a few bottom end VoIP devices.
SIP is the obvious use for this type of tech where your traffic is already paid for ie no local-call charges.
plenty of stuff out there in the tech web .. try google to begin with.
regards
Paul Swafford
Nick Rout wrote:
ok i have paid my 10 euro and tried a couple of calls. a bit hampered here by lack of a mic on the office pc, but i used the skype gui to call my office number and connected fine, talking into the phone produced sound on the loudspeakers. reasonable clear, but I do have a full speed jetstream connection.
i tried to call my cellphone and it rang after a much longer delay than the landline. however after i answered it skype or the cellphone hung up and skype advised "service unavilable, try again"
however i was charged for the call, presumably the minimum.
costs so far:
2 one second calls to the cell phone @ E 0.252 2 calls under one minute to the landline @ E 0.017
Now local calls in NZ cost about 3 c a minute and cells about 70 c a minute, although maybe that has recently gone down to about 45/50c
according to asb .25 euro is about .45 NZ and .017 euro is pretty much exactly .03 NZ, so it does seem I was charged local calling prces, although i am not sure who to complain to (if i wanted to) about the two cell phone calls that didn't _actually_ connect.
On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 16:55:09 +1200 Jim Cheetham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Robert Fisher wrote:
Anyone on the list tried Skype for Linux?
http://www.skype.com/
If so, what do you think of it?
I've just installed it on OSX, as the beta came out a couple of days ago.
It does work, although a colleague of mine (female) has started to feel a little threatened by the account listing :-
Even though listed as offline I have been getting two or three calls a night (but not answering them) from strange men with South American names.I've made successful calls to PSTN phones in the UK - audible lag of about a second, but it's interesting how quickly the conversation paces itself to that. Haven't managed a p2p connection yet, the far end (my mum) isn't very technical :-)
Another colleague was concerned about the amount of state/poll traffic going to their servers - if you left the client available all the time, he felt that you would be spending a far amount of bandwidth doing nothing.
I haven't investigated the network usage in detail yet, but will do soon.
-jim
