I got this from the Blind-Ad list.

sharon

This is from today's New York Times online.
Chris

April 6, 2006
David Pogue

Internet Calls Untethered From Your PC

WHY does Skype get so much hype? Sure, this software lets you make
free "phone calls," computer to computer, anywhere in the world.
But it wasn't the first
such program, it's not the most feature-laden, and it's still a
mystery to most people over 25.

Yet somehow, Skype is changing everything. Twenty-five million
people are using it to make free calls, much to the annoyance of
the phone companies. College
students call home and friends with it. Business travelers keep in
touch with the family. Visitors to the United States chit-chat with
their buddies in
Europe, Japan or wherever. The software ? free from
skype.com
and available for Mac, Windows, Linux and PocketPC ? is pitifully
easy to use, and the sound quality is more like FM radio than a
phone call.

Skype's popularity has caused some impressive ripples in the fabric
of business and society. The word is now a verb, ? la
Google
("Have your people Skype my people"). Last fall,
eBay
bought Skype for $1.3 billion and 32.4 million shares of eBay
stock. And most intriguing of all, an entire industry of Skype
accessories has sprung up.

But one niggling footnote continues to dog Skype: to make free
calls, you and your conversation partner must both sit there in
front of your computers,
nerdlike, wearing headsets. You can call regular telephones, but
that's not free. (Rates are complicated, but 2.1 cents a minute is
typical.) And you still
have to sit handcuffed to your computer.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could make and receive Skype calls from
your home phone or any ordinary cellphone?

Enter the VoSky Call Center ($60 at
actiontec.com),
nicknamed the Liberator. (All right, I gave it that nickname, but
still.) It's a tiny black box, about the size of a sandwich, that
connects to a Windows
PC (with a U.S.B. cable), to your phone line and to your telephone.
An exceptionally clear instruction sheet walks you through the
installation.

As a final preparatory step, you're supposed to install Skype, if
you haven't already, fill up its buddy list with the Skype
addresses of your pals, and
assign a speed-dial number to each one. Then you're ready for the
VoSky magic show.

FOR its first trick, the Call Center will let you call Skype
buddies using the telephone on your desk. You pick up the handset,
dial ## (which means, "This
one's for Skype") and listen to a recorded female voice say:
"Welcome to the VoSky Call Center. Please enter your contact's
speed-dial number." (She pronounces
it VOSS-key.)

Fortunately, you don't have to sit through her complete recording;
you can interrupt by dialing at any time. She's just a digital
audio file, not easily
insulted.

There's a quick click, and then the call is placed. Your comrade,
perhaps thousands of miles away, hears the familiar Skype ring
tone, sits down at the
PC, puts on the headset and answers. You, meanwhile, chat cheerily
on your cordless phone as you move about, do the laundry or set the
table.

The sound quality is excellent. It's not as good as a
Skype-to-Skype call, of course, because you're listening on a phone
? but it's much better than a
regular phone call.

If you've signed up for SkypeOut, that 2.1-cents-a-minute plan that
lets you call phone numbers rather than computers, you make calls
in exactly the same
way. Pick up your phone and touch ##2 (or whatever the speed-dial
number is), or even ## plus a standard phone number in
international format.

The second magic trick is even more impressive. This time, you can
make a Skype call from your cellphone, wherever you happen to be.

To make this work, you tell the Call Center's PC software ahead of
time how long it should wait ? say, until the fifth ring ? before
answering incoming
calls.

Then, when you're out and about with your cellphone, you dial home.
After the designated number of rings, the Call Center's recorded
young lady answers.
After you plug in your password, she prompts you to touch the
desired speed-dial number, and off you go. You're talking free to
your aunt in Antigua, from
your cellphone, courtesy of your home phone and your PC.

"Free" is a relative term, of course. Just calling your home number
may still be using up your cellphone's monthly minutes, depending
on the time of day
and what kind of cellular plan you have. Even so, you'll save a lot
of money if you call internationally.

Trick No. 3 is Skype forwarding. If you're away from home when
somebody tries to reach you using Skype, the Call Center rings your
cellphone (or any number
you specify) so you can take the call.

The Call Center's last trick is call return, and it's pretty neat.
Suppose you try to reach Dad in Dallas, but he's not at his desk.
In that case, the Call
Center's recorded voice offers to call you back when he is online.
Sooner or later, when you least expect it, your cellphone rings;
it's your Call Center,
whose voice lets you know that Dad is online again. She tells you
that if you'd like to call him right now (using Skype), press 1.

Incidentally, none of this affects your home phone's ability to
make regular phone calls. You place them just as you always do
(without dialing ## first),
and the phone rings normally when someone calls you. Handy
indicator lights on the Call Center box let you know whether you're
answering a regular call
or an Internet call.

This all sounds pretty complicated on paper, no doubt. But for the
most part, each individual function is beautifully done, crisply
and simply executed
and easily learned.

There are, alas, exceptions.

They begin with the necessity to leave your PC turned on, with
Skype running, at all times. That requirement alone may be a
show-stopper for anyone concerned
about the environment or electric bills.

Another issue is that to make a Skype call from your phone, you
have to use the handset to which it's connected. You can't use
another extension in the
house (unless it's part of a multihandset cordless system).

Then there's the dialing-in problem. You see, the Call Center can,
at your option, turn the computer into a digital answering machine;
if you've turned
it on, calling your home number produces the young woman's voice
saying, "Please leave a message" (although if you're calling in so
you can make a Skype
call, you can just tap out your password instead).

So what's the problem? Incredibly, you can't replace the young
woman's answering-machine greeting with a recording of your own voice.

Yet if you don't turn on the answering function, then calling your
home number greets you with a recording that says, "Please enter
your password." That's
great if it's you calling, but it's bound to befuddle anyone else
who happens to call. The only way to avoid that problem is to set
the Call Center to
wait, say, eight rings, long after your traditional answering
machine picks up. But then, of course, you sacrifice the entire
"call home to call Skype"
feature.

And speaking of the recordings: Good heavens, was this the best
voice-over talent ActionTec could find? The young lady speaks
slowly and self-consciously,
like the world's worst actor in a junior high musical. You can just
imagine her saying, "Do not look now, Dorothy, but are those flying
monkeys I see?
Oh dear me."

If those gotchas don't getcha, though, you'd be hard-pressed to
find another $60 gadget that works so crisply, reliably and
efficiently. If you're among
the 25 million existing Skypaholics, the Call Center could magnify
the pleasure of making those free calls. And if you're not, the
VoSky Call Center is
one more reason to see what Skype is all about.

E-mail:
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Copyright 2006
The New York Times Company

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