V-Phone is light, travels well - i have cancelled my ATT long distance service :-)
Written: Sep 18 '06
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So after reading hundreds of reviews from various VOIP review sites and reading the good and bad reviews i decided that i needed to try the service for my self. I had originally talked with packet8 and inquired about the line. The sales person said that they were using their service. It was okay, but not good. I then called my friend who had been using Vonage for sometime. I admit that the phone quality on the recieving end was marginal and was prone to 1 second delays before he responded and it sounded hollow and had some echoeing along with a lack of tonal quality - in short it stunk. However, the day that i called him to ask for his opinion the quality was better than packet8. He explained that Vonage had upgraded the service, and that it was better. I agreed with him that it was a substantial difference, enough to dissuade me to go with Vonage and signup for their basic $14.95 plan. I ran some tests and called my friend who had reffered me to Vonage and overall i was pleased with the V-phone and the Plantronics headset. Read: toss out the 2.5mm headset that ships with the unit and go with the model M60 from Plantronics.
Equipment
I ended up going with their orange thumb drive, which serves as a flash drive and contains the software/drivers for the calls, but it only works with Windows. I had bought an Intel MacBook Pro and i had bootcamp installled on it so I started up bootcamp, switched over to Windows and it worked without much of a hiccup. The driver is recognized quickly and in fact, is seamless. Since the unit is small it travels very well. When i was in Rio De Janerio in September 2006 i used Vonage to check my voicemails and call my friends in the USA. The phone number i had was a USA number and the quality on the recieving end and my end was better than the cell phone when i am in America. Infact my parents had thought i was back from vacation when i had called because the quality was that good.
Microphone
The ipod-style microphone that comes with the unit is substandard and don't expect much quality from it. i replaced the microphone with a Plantronics over the ear microphone 2.5mm for cell phones manufacturers sku# 0 17229 11637 5 (model M60). The quality was superior and the tone was richer, not quite as loud, it was neccesary to turn up the speaker, and keep the microphone portion just under the maximum. It will make a difference so adjust the settings to get the best dynamic range.
Promotion
if you have a refferal from an existing Vonage user you get a free month of service, but it requires that you sign up on line. if you need a refferal feel free to email me at yowzor@yahoo.com
Using the phone at Internet Cafe
While in Brazil i used Vonage. Overall it saved me money, but the quality of service when calling from the internet cafe was not good at all, it was almost useless infact. I kept having to repeat everything and the recipient who speaks Portugese was getting every 5th word or so. I guess it was due to the extra hops and router issues at the internet cafe. Furthermore, it was time consuming to boot the computer and reboot the computer log in and go through the immacanations. On top of that it was neccessary for me to physically go the the cafe which took further time and the Vonage V-phone only worked on the newer Windows OS (don't ask me much more i am a Mac Guy). Just as an experiment i tried the V-phone on my friends computer at her apartment and dialed her Brazilian Cell number, which is $.17/minute to dial http://www.vonage.com/intrates.php?lid=nav_intrates as opposed to over $1/minute if you use a traditional Brazilian land line? To my pleasure the quality of the call was quite good and i could have a normal conversation, so i would say that the Internet Cafe was the culprit in terms of lack of QOS when using the V-phone and calling a Brazilian cell number. My total charges for 80 minutes was $12.45 although when you take into account - "hello can you hear me - can you hear me?" it should have been less than that.
I have also called my Brazilian friend from my house in Los Angeles and the quality is fine and the price is right - half the price of global-call.net, they charge $.36/minute
Bootcamp and Parallels
i have since removed bootcamp and have installed Parallels and now the V-Phone doesn't work. I have contacted the makers of Parallels and have not heard back from the Support team. Suffice to say that the V-Phone needs to have the computer booted from Windows not running as a virtual machine, so it seems.
Cons
I still have a landline for my business, old habits dies hard. I also have two cell phones; ATT and T-mobile along with Vonage. So Vonage will not take the place of a mobile cell phone since it doesn't operate as a wifi device alone, but needs a host computer. Requires a Windows Machine and is time consuming to reboot my Mac in Bootcamp and vice-a-versa.
Pros
works well wireless to my airport wireless station. The SIP protocol appears to have gone through some improvements - i would fathom to guess there are less hops for the packets to travel. I couldn't substantiate this since i had no IP address to ping or do a traceroute.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
mkasdin
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Reviews written: 4
Trusted by: 0 members
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