"Bill Kearney" wrote in
t:

Ditto - but mine has the other item in spades, where she can call her
kids and her mother, and for that matter, as she did Sunday, her twin
in Hong Kong and her sister in England, on a three-way, all over
wifi. I have yet to hook up the new Vonage router and double phone
set, but I expect it will do just fine - and it's another 12v item
:{))

Yeah, the VOIP thing would certainly be interesting and should we need
it the network's there to support it. But our cell phone coverage and
plans are more than sufficient to handle our calling needs here on the
Chesapeake. Were we calling or travelling internationally we'd
certainly look into it. I've heard plenty of horror stories about
Vonage and other lowball VOIP providers. Mainly that their voice
quality sucks (even with excellent connectivity). Along with that
it's easier to get rid of a venereal disease than to unsubscribe from
their services.

-Bill Kearney



I wouldn't waste money on Vonage, which is really on the rocks, now.
They are so far on the rocks my local Circuit City is selling a Vonage
system for $50 WITH A $100 REBATE! They'll pay YOU to take it home in
rebates!

VoIP = Skype. No monthly ripoff $25 like Vonage. You only pay for
USAGE, and only that after Jan 1, 2007 if you are in the USA or Canada.
Skype to Skype to the twins in Hong Kong and England is ALWAYS free, as
to everyone else on the planet. It only costs you a little relay
bandwidth you'll never notice as Skype routes other users data, not voice
data, through your Skype to distribute the load on the system, a tiny
price to pay for something that works fantastic.

Now the pot just got sweeter! Check out http://www.voxlib.com/ from
Canada for Skype. This software controls your Skype when you've gone off
away from your computer......

-----------------------------------------text file inserted

http://www.voxlib.com/

Yesterday, I got a message from a webpage box I clicked saying Voxlib was
ready for beta testing free downloading, so I downloaded it and installed
it. Install it into the computer at home you leave running all the time.
By next year, they plan on running it on a server, instead of your own
computers, but right now you must run it on your computer to use
it....for free.

Skype, of course for US/Canadians, is free until Jan 2007 when it comes
online for only a pittance.

*** What does Voxlib do for me??

Voxlib is an intellegent answering and conferencing software to control
Skype when you're not at home. There are two ways to use it:

1) - with Skype In ($US28/YEAR!...CHEAP!) on your own Skype In phone
number. You simply call your Skype In number from your Cellphone...or
any phone with your PIN number...and Voxlib answers you, automatically
with caller ID from your cell, or with PIN number access if you don't
have caller ID. It answers with a voice prompt of a menu to select from.
Press Causes Voxlib to:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Call someone's Skype on their computer.

2 Call out from your computer to a telephone
using Skype Out.

3 Tell me who on your Skype contact list is
online at the moment. Reads it to you.

4 Connects you to Skype Voicemail (free with Skype In)

2) - By using SMS messages between Voxlib and your cellphone....

Voxlib can also be operated by SMS messages, instead of voice prompts.
All the features above can be accessed and operated by SMS. This is
advantageous if your have a cellphone like Nextel where all INCOMING
calls are free and don't use airtime. You send an SMS message to Voxlib
telling it to connect to someone on your contact list or to a telephone
number, instead of direct calling Voxlib on Skype In. Voxlib then makes
a Skype conference call, the same as it does by voice/touchtone commands,
but it now calls your cellphone (INCOMING FREE CALL on some systems) and
connects you to your Skype or phone line party.....anywhere on the
planet. It simply prompts your party of the conference with you.

Anyone on Nextel or having free incoming calls use no airtime with the
SMS features. SMS costs too much to use on my cell, but your mileage may
vary.


Recap......

Up until now, you had to be at your Skype terminal on your computer, or
from one of the special little Skype Phones like my Linksys CIT200
cordless Skype Phone near the computer to do these things. Voxlib allows
you to operate Skype by remote control from any cellphone or landline
phone, anywhere!

*** Why is this important?

Skype calls are FREE to other Skype users, anywhere on the planet. If
you have friends in foreign countries and call them on your cellular
phone, the cellphone ripoff artists make you pay, DEARLY, to call them
from your cell. Now, you can call them from the car and pay only airtime
minutes to a local telephone number...your Skype In number...even if they
are in Siberia or Tibet. (just press 1)

Calling long distance from your cellphone to a telephone outside your
country, say Japan, reminds one of the days when it was $4/minute to call
the next town over on Ma Bell. US to Japan runs about $1.50 to
3.50/minute on cellular carriers. However, with Voxlib, you can call
your local Skype In, Voxlib answers, you press 2, Voxlib asks for country
code-area code-number and places the call to Japan on your Skype Out from
your computer at home it is running on for $US0.021/minute. That reduces
that $35 ten minute phone call to Japan to 21 cents! Not everyone's
cellphone has free long distance to other US phones. They pay nothing
but airtime to call Grandma in Topeka until Jan 2007 on Skype Out, then
only 2.1c/min....not the 49c/min Smiley's Cellular and Haircare wants for
a long distance cellular phone call. (just press 2)

You can find out who is on Skype now from anywhere...just press 3.

You can listen to your Skype Voicemail calls without going to a Skype
computer, from any phone, automatically from your cellphone.

Works great. There's a few bugs but you can help in the forums Voxlib is
running on their website. I found you need to manually turn off AUTO
ANSWER in Skype and reported that to Voxlib today. Voxlib can't answer
your call if Autoanswer in Skype is ON. They'll fix it...(c;

It just keeps gettin' better'n better!

--------------------------------------------end of text file inserted

Vonage sucks.....(c;.....You may quote me!

--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

No monthly ripoff $25 like Vonage.

Hardly a "ripoff" compared to the Verizon service I replaced.
(And I use the $15/mo version anyway, for each of two lines).
Kept my phone numbers I had for 15 years.
Vonage has provided a nice, cheap service.
I pay a fraction of what Verizon charged.

Skype is nice, but it's not all the way there yet.
When they can do number transport, too, I'll consider switching.
For now I only Skype when on my laptop wifi'ing and
don't have any more free cellular time.

VoIP = Skype.

No, VoIP is based on open, published standards. Skype is a proprietary hack
with nothing published regarding it's format or protocols.

It only costs you a little relay
bandwidth you'll never notice as Skype routes other users data

You say this based on what experience and measurement from an actual marine
environment? p2p traffic is not without it's waste of bandwidth. For
someone in a limited bandwidth situation it may well be a BIG problem to go
"sharing" it for p2p apps like skype.

"Bill Kearney" wrote in
t:

You say this based on what experience and measurement from an actual
marine environment? p2p traffic is not without it's waste of
bandwidth. For someone in a limited bandwidth situation it may well
be a BIG problem to go "sharing" it for p2p apps like skype.




The only time VoIP is going to function is over a satellite phone or on
wifi at the dock. I don't know anyone rich enough to use a satellite
phone for any kind of broadband, so we're talking about wifi from the
dock condo at the, as the little old lady in Beaufort, SC, put it,
"floating trailer park". There, it's no different than it is at home.

Cellphone is cheaper than any VoIP cruising down the ICW and rivers or
close, real close, offshore. "Out there", we're back in $1.50/min
satellite country.

In the "actual marine environment", as you say, no VoIP service is going
to save anyone any money.

I measure the traffic Skype uses to route calls to other users through my
system at around 200 bytes/second, on average. As Skype doesn't work on
dialup connections, but does, at least until Verizon Wireless catches
them, work well on a laptop aircard on 1X lowfi internet. This traffic
it consumes is imperceptable, even on the aircard. I've seen 8 Skype
connections through my laptop on wifi with no ill effects at all. It's a
tiny price to pay for great telephone service that has no monthly load
fees at all!

Which VoIP service in the "actual marine environment" is its price
competitor? Those who can afford satellite phones are not interested in
price. Small boaters living aboard at the dock of a wifi-enabled marina
would be crazy to use anything else, ask Skip.

Skype's new partner, Voxlib (www.voxlib.com), in Canada, has REVERSED a
deficiency of Skype for anyone who wants it, for free at the moment.
Voxlib allows you to call your Skype contacts from a remote location,
from your cellphone or any telephone on the planet with your incredibly-
expensive $28/year SkypeIn phone number. Voxlib-to-Skype calls are all
free. Voxlib-to-landline/mobiles are dirt cheap at Skype Out rates, free
until January for US/Canadian users. How they make any profit is a
mystery to me, but you'll get no complaints from Skype customers...(c;

If you have a cellular service that doesn't charge for INCOMING calls,
such as Nextel for instance, Voxlib calls are even free to the cellphone
when you control Voxlib through its SMS message functions. Voxlib gets
the message, makes the interconnect to your party, then calls your
cellphone, a free incoming call, and connects the two of you in
conference. After January, that will be 2.1c/minute to most civilized
places where the local telephone bureaucrats don't make the caller pay
for the call. This is a pretty cheap boat phone if you have wifi. It's
even worth installing cable internet to your own wifi hotspot in a box on
the dock near your boat if the marina doesn't provide it at a reasonable
rate. A group of nearby boats can share the cost of this resource and
everyone on the dock can have Skype phone service aboard. WEP protect
the hotspot to encourage others to join and help fund it.



--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

Hi, Larry,

You've been sufficiently taken to task for most of what you wrote :{))
that I'll not repeat it. However...

Larry wrote:

(most snipped)

Calling long distance from your cellphone to a telephone outside your

and, there's the rub. If I'm not on a cell I'm out of communication,
whether or not I care about having a computer up all the time. As
you've frequently observed, power is our friend. When Engulf and
Devour isn't at hand to offer us all the power we care to pay for, some
of us have to watch our watts.

So, between the necessity of having a computer on line all the time and
needing some telephone to talk to it in order to make any call I
wouldn't otherwise just use the phone aforementioned, I think I'll
stick to this mode of telephony.

Vonage sucks.....(c;.....You may quote me!

Well, if you look at the little carat next to the above, I just did.
However, I - and any other respondents that I've seen - don't agree.

As it is, I'm about to drop my cell service. Despite their trumpeting,
in billboards all over town, their being the company with the fewest
dropped calls, my inability to get a Cingular (previously AT&T) signal
makes it nearly worthless, at least here. Of course, down island, it
would be worthless anyway, so this just accelerates the obvious - I
don't need a cell phone.

Of course, if I were running a service business, and I had good cell
coverage, I agree I'd need one. However, I'm hopeful I don't make
global (pardon the expression - Vonage works globally if you have a
wifi signal) statements about utility or suitability to a purpose...

I've found Vonage to be very valuable; were I still in a wired
environment, that's what I'd do, again. Any reading this who think
they agree, please drop me a note so I can refer you - we'll both get a
free month if you take the service...

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery!
Follow us at and


"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely
nothing-half so
much worth doing as simply messing, messing-about-in-boats; messing
about in
boats-or *with* boats.
In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter,
that's
the charm of it.
Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never
get
anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to
do, and
you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."





--
There's amazing intelligence in the Universe.
You can tell because none of them ever called Earth.

Vonage works globally if you have a wifi signal

No, it only works if you've got a stable signal that has good throughput.
Which proves to be quite a challenge in the assortment of location I've
tried, albeit within the limited confines of Chesapeake north of the
Potomac. I'm sure signal coverage varies greatly in different areas but I'd
never assume it'd (wifi) be reliable enough to depend on it being present
and usable. Cellular data services are often more reliable but sometimes
slower (usually) and not without their billing issues. So using a p2p
shared system like skype could potentially be a real problem.

The nice part is there are choices. With today's level of deployment
there's not enough to make it reliable but at least it's *possible*. Adjust
your expectations accordingly.