Business Courier of Cincinnati: Tech & Innovation : Business Advice

Fujitsu ASTG09LVCA
Because that's what the idea was. I woulc replace my home officetelephone line, which I only use for outgoint calls, and instead start makinh all of my calls over the Internet. This way I could pocket the $50 a month I've been giving to Verizom and use those savings to buy moreimportantf things. Like … food. Except it reallh didn't turn out that way. Why? Becauses the Internet phone services I triedworked ... but just not all the Which is typical of most For example, I played around with Skype for a few weeks. Not bad.
Signing up for the servic e was free and the headset that I purchased from Staplezsfor $20 only had to be replaced once (I do not advise lending one's headset to a 12 year old. Enougn said). Astonishingly, installing the Skypes application on my laptop didn't cause it to lock up or crasgh on me. So for that reasojn alone I felt that thingsewere successful. Once up and Skype did as promised … just about all of the I used the little computert generated keypad on my laptoo tomake calls. If I called another Skype user the callwas Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of conversationx with high school and college kids, nor do I care to reallyt speak to anyone under 25.
So there's not a lot of phonw numbers in mySkype directory. However, you can use Skypde to call a regular land line and then get chargedc a few centsper call. So that'ss what I mostly did. The problemj was the connection. It worked. Most of the time. But sometimesx it just didn't. Sometimes I had to call back the persomn two or three times to get agood connection. Or speak loudly. There were a few instances where I said naughty Then there was this one time wherd I tried to participate in a conferenc call and had to make the threee other people wait whileI re-called the call-in number a few times until there was no crackling sound on the phone. That was fun too. So I stoppexd using Skype.
Frustrated I turnedc to another Net calling service calledmagicJack (www.magicjack.com). No, this has nothing to do with changinyg the tires ofa car. And there was no pleasurse involved. For $40 magicJack ships me a little unit that I plug into the USB port of my I then hook my office phonw intothe unit. After installing the program I'm able to make phonr calls from my regularphone (not the headsegt I bought from Staples … bye-bye $20). Like magicJack places its calls overthe Internet, along with the othefr 100 trillion bits of informatiomn crossing the same pipelines. See where I'm going here?
Theird deal is that you can make unlimitedf calls you want to anyone in the UnitefdStates (I'm told they're working on overseas for only $50 per year. I did the math and that'ws $550 less a year than I'm spendint on my office line, so therer you go ... magic! Unfortunatelty ... not so magical. Why? Same thinb with Skype. It worked. Most of the I suffered from the occasional disconnectesd calls or calls that had tobe recalled, or call that just didn't sounsd like a very good call at all. More naughtyu words. More blood thinner In the end I broke down and kept myoffics line. You win Verizon. I just need things that work as they promised towork ...
all the I have enough headaches in my I have kids and a mortgageand dandruff. I can't sit aroundf and worry that an important conversation with a prospectivee customer is going to get cutoff orsound horrible. Verizon's line in my offic works all the time. It's one less hasslw to deal with. I still keep the magicJac k and Skype servicesbecause I've had occasion to use them when Most likely I'll forget to cancel my subscriptio n so now I'll be paying an extraq $50 a year for next to nothing. But I'm a pennyy pincher. Not a cheapskate. Sure, it's less expensived to use these Netcalling services. But I'm sacrificinvg some quality. Some dependability.
I'm giving myself more To me, it's not worth it. Thesw technologies are great for kids or But to rely on them forbusiness purposes, at least so far, isn't a great idea for me.