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4
VoIP
for Small Business to Home Office -
it’s ready, but are you?
Written by the Tech Edge E-zine
staff,
May 1st, 2007
A category that
we’ve really had a lot of fun and some frustration
with, is self contained “Wi-Fi” mobile phones and there
are more of these than you would believe. Some are great and some are
down
right
terrible, so be really careful which you buy – as we've said
before, do your research first.
Wi-Fi phones fall into two categories – SIP based phones and
service specific phone, Skype in particular. We’ll explain in
that detail in the subsequent segments.
We haven’t finished testing all the Wi-Fi phones on our wish
list as yet. But a few that we’ve learned to particularly appreciate,
and ones that you could consider if you’re anxious to buy, are:
the Belkin F1PP000GN-SK Wi-Fi Skype Phone it’s Boingo® hotspot
authentification service enabled. This is a great feature for those
using Skype or any VoIP service while traveling as Boingo has more
hotspot access in airports, hotels and restaurants than anyone else.
Belkin
was the
first with a Wi-Fi Skype Phone and the first to adopt Boingo. This
Wi-Fi phone isn’t the smallest; but it is the slimmest, bright
LCD screen, thumb dialing friendly and very sexy in all black with
a backlit keypad.
Belkin Wi-Fi Phone (left) and Linksys WIP320, both Skype
The Linksys WIP-320 Wi-Fi iPhone© is very compact, has the best connection range and the only Wi-Fi portable phone with a built-in speakerphone. The WIP-320 iPhone is all white; with a very easy to read transparent full back illuminated keypad and also employs the standard Skype easy to read bright LCD screen interface that Skype requires all certified phones use. Like the Belkin, the Linksys WIP-320 Wi-Fi iPhone has equally amazing clear call sound quality. There will be more review details in the upcoming segment on mobile VoIP hardware.
Need something ultra portable, a device you could plug
into any computer with a high-speed internet access? The unique Vonage
USB “V-Phone” carries
your account, the Vonage softphone application, an integrated sound
card circuit and comes with a combo stereo earbuds with microphone,
all in a thumb sized orange “flash drive” package. It even
has 256 MB of extra storage space. Sorry Mac heads, it only works with
Windows. 1st Prize for cleaver!
Vonage anywhere there's
a computer, the "V-Phone ®"
Attesting to the growing popularity of portable VoIP,
there are more SIP Standards based pocket portables than you can count;
but our favorite
so far is the D-Link DPH-541 Wi-Fi Flip Phone, which could be used with
theoretically any SIP service offering “softphone” capabilities,
including Vonage. Looking like a regular Cell flip phone, the small silver
and black models are just perfect for your pant or jacket pocket. Call
sound quality is exceptional and battery life is the best of all Wi-Fi
pocket phones tested.
Silver and Black D-Link DPH-541 Wi-Fi SIP Flip Phones
One thing that we want to warn you about is that none of the current
crop of Wi-Fi pocket portable VoIP phones will deliver the length of
battery life that you are used to from your Cell phone, not even close.
The reason is very simple; 802.11x “radios” for transmitting,
receiving and staying linked to an 802.11x Access Point, consumes considerably
more current (amperage) than any Cell Phone does. Considering the size
of these Wi-Fi portable VoIP phones, it is a miracle that they get as
much as 36 hours of standby or a few hours of talk time on one charge.
Incidentally, all of the phones we’ve tested so far are 802.11g
and are fully 802.b compatible. In an upcoming segment we
will review each phone and service in detail so that you can make a very
educated decision for your device purchase.
Stay tuned right here - Segment 2 on July 15th. To be Continued!
© 2007
Tech Edge E-zine
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