I wrote, touting Pagoo: > > I get notification of a phone call and can return the call within > > minutes.
Bill Neill wrote: > Where are you notified and how? Is this a spoken word to a typed word > - called Speak-a-word or something like that? There's an elegant little "desktop agent" on my, well, screen's desktop. When someone calls me, and my line is busy (usually I'm online), that person is instructed to dial my full number; then they hear my message, and they can leave a message for me. If I'm online, then within a few minutes my Pagoo Desktop Agent makes a sound, and I see a notice on it that I've a message to listen to. The phone number of the person calling me is present on the desktop agent, too. (The desktop agent takes up 2.2 MB of RAM on my system.) This allows me to react to calls within minutes of receiving them. I consider this better than being interrupted on the Net, because over half the calls I receive I simply don't want to take. (Do you get marketing calls?) It's especially useful if, like me, the person you want to talk to is local, making the return call toll-free. I got Pagoo simply because I want to react to my parents if they call. They are getting up in years, and I can drive to their place in a few minutes after receiving a call from them. So I can run errands, make a drug store or hospital run, etc. The price? Less than $5 a month for the service, from Pagoo.com. You must have Call Forwarding on Busy on your telephone line, and that costs something from your local telephone company. I also have Caller ID and Call Forwarding on No Answer. It is a simple system, and it works great for me. It is not as cheap as some other systems, of course. I like Pagoo better than Meridian Mail, which my phone company supplies as its answering system for about $10/mo. I can be online for hours, and miss important calls. I hate having to phone up to an answering service to retrieve calls. (At some point Meridian Mail will offer a service like Pagoo, and it will be integrated with phone companies, and thus cheaper than Pagoo - you'd think. I assume Pagoo is quaking in its boots at this prospect.) I considered getting a modem interruptor like Catch-A-Call, but decided that I didn't need or want immediate and frequent interruptions of downloads... just to take a call (all in all, I dislike the telephone; not my favorite technology). It all depends on what people want, of course. Oddly, Pagoo advertises its service as merely a message service for people when they are online through dial-upp. The website instructs you to put Call Forwarding on Busy on your line. They never mention it works also with Call Forwarding on No Answer, turning the service into a full messaging service. I assume that this is to get around some arcane element of telephone regulation. I use Pagoo as a full message service, when I'm in or when I'm out. It does require I start the computer and go online to get my messages, however. For some people, this would be as annoying as calling up a voice messaging service. Not for me. A cool side-benefit: I can get my office's messges while I'm at home. I have Pagoo for my office. But I hve a computer at home, and a Pagoo Desktop Agent on that. When I'm at home and don't want to go to the office, all of my messages can appear on my home computer! I like Pagoo enough I may even keep it when I splurge for DSL (which is very expensive in my area). I like computers enough that this kind of service is precisely what I need. I like the Pagoo Desktop Agent. Ideally, of course, Pagoo would be instantaneous, and would allow callers to reach me live, and I could talk on the phone while still online, through the computer, using my multimedia headset attached to my computer. But the idea of Internet telephone seems to have fallen by the wayside. Or am I wrong? Is Internet Telephony still being attempted? (Everybody I know who tried it four or more years ago abandoned it.) Oh, and Callwave/Faxwave has a system similar to Pagoo for FREE, I think. But I don't believe it works with Macs. I researched it before going with Pagoo. I've forgotten exactly why I settled on Pagoo. (I still get my faxes from faxwave, of course. It's free. It works. Very cool.) - t "I know . . . I know . . . I use too many ellipses. . . ." -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
