Getting better: Now it's free
Written: Mar 22 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: looks, getting better, now it's free
Cons: sound quality, spotty connections on slow modems
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| fozner's Full Review: Net2Phone |
I have written a complete article about how I use net2phone for free and it's published on my homepage. Please visit that site if you want to know how it's done (Note to Internet Police: It's perfectly legal and not a 'hack' or 'scam'). The following is a review of the performance and my overall experience of Net2Phone, which appears to have heeded the bad reviews by improving service:
The quality is about like cellular, radio-telephone or marine radio. Having been raised in the 'bush', this type of communication is fine with me at the great price of free. But even at their now 'normal' price of one cent per minute, I think it's fair. If your sound card is one of the recommended types, I assume the quality is better. I really can't make any recommendations because my system is somewhat different than normal:
My 'sound card' is home made from scrap parts, (I'm an electronics hobbyist btw) and the quality on my homebuilt 'computer' / music studio is superb. I haven't tried it on a factory-made computer with one of those slow 56K modems that mere mortals use, but it works great over my 1024K cablemodem. For the record, I did use dialpad on a friend's computer and it sounded about the same. I know this is like comparing hand-picked apples to store-bought oranges... Anybody want a banana?
Some people complain about a persistent echo or hollow sound when using this service and that is caused by the computer speakers feeding back into the microphone or the use of a cheap microphone. That's why I recommend using a pair of headphones and a quality mic. An ordinary pair of walkman headphones and a cheap mic will work, but quality will suffer. And yes, there are free headsets out there on the internet, but if you want to do the job right, I sell hifi quality Yamaha headsets with a built in microphone that do the job very nicely for $34.95 (maybe less) on my site. This is beginning to sound like an advertisement for my site, and I'm sorry for that. Personally, I use a Koss home studio mic I bought at a local shop and a pair of Labtec studio monitor headphones.
I like the net2phone interface and graphics better than dialpad, especially the net2fax, speed dial & other services. The sound quality is still about the same (at least that's my experience so far). I will continue to use it as long as it is free. I don't know if it's always been this way, but the Net2phone now displays banner ads during your call. None of their banner ads have really interested me, but when they do, I'll be sure to check them out.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
fozner
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Member: Henry Kroll
Location: Anchorage, AK
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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