Skype and other PC-based solutions

Hello from the UK. We've been busy traveling and working on our travel website, The Savvy Traveler, so we are a little behind with our VoIP postings.

My plan was to write a nice article about how great Vonage is working for us, but I fried the adapter. Now, I have been dealing with 240 volts vs. 110 volts for what? - 10 years! So I am not the type to just plug in a 110 volt box to 240 power to see the fireworks. What happened I do not know, but as soon as the adapter was plugged in (and it was plugged into a 110 volt step-down, thank you very much!), the Vonage adapter actually smoked! Like a forest fire! I think it must have just been it's time, but as these things do, it gave me an opportunity to check out some previously untrodden territory.

First, I called Vonage UK to verify that I could go to the local PC World (our equlivalent of CompUSA) and pick up a new adapter that could be provisioned with our US account. Guess what? Couldn't do it. Seems Vonage doesn't want to sulley it's UK adapters with US phone numbers. But no worries - the nice gentleman gave me an RMA so I could get a new adapter and return the fried one...to the US. I explained that I wouldn't be back on US soil (unless I happen by the Embassy in London) before August, so he would have to give me a bit of a lead time to get the adapter back. (Fortunately some family members coming over will bring the replacement.) He completely understood, of course, but nonetheless I have received about 6 dunning e-mails already that are reminding me to get it back much, much sooner. When I respond, of course, there are no replies.

Enter Skype...we mentioned Skype earlier. And, I really didn't think to much of it, because I am not really a PC-VoIP kind of guy. But to my utter amazement it actually works quite well! And, running it on my PowerBook G4 which has excellent audio dampening, even without earphones it is really quite useful.

Of course, why pay $0.017/minute when I can call for free, right? And now with Skype it is possible to make and receive calls to ordinary phones with your computer. But, since I have a Vonage account, I could add their "SoftPhone" option for about $10 per month and get unlimited fee calls. Well, it works as well as Skype, but I am not sure that it was the best economic solution. Have to make a lot of calls to justify it - we'll see. The advantage is that it has a normal Vonage-class voice mail while Skype's is still in the testing phase. And it appears (not for sure, but I believe) that the CLID is carried with Vonage SoftPhone calls, but even with the new SkypeIN, the number does not seem to go with the call.

The bottom line though is that both of these PC services are head-turners. I was really skeptical about them, but one of our friends in Italy who had been using it to communicate with his boys in the US convinced me to try it. I am glad I did!