Saturday, March 19, 2011

San Antonio Business Journal: Tech & Innovation : Business Advice

Air Purifiers Naperville
Because that's what the idea was. I wouldf replace my home officetelephone line, which I only use for outgoingh calls, and instead start making all of my calle over the Internet. This way I could pocket the $50 a montu I've been giving to Verizon and use thosse savings to buy moreimportant things. Like food. Except it reallh didn't turn out that way. Why? Because the Internet phone servicesx I triedworked ... but just not all the Which is typical ofmost technology. For I played around with Skype (www.skype.com) for a few weeks. Not bad.
Signinv up for the service was free and the headset that I purchased from Staplesfor $20 only had to be replacedr once (I do not advise lending one's headsert to a 12 year old. Enough said). Astonishingly, installing the Skypre application on mylaptop didn't causee it to lock up or crasj on me. So for that reasonm alone I felt that thingswere successful. Once up and Skype did as promised … just about all of the I used the little computer generated keypadc on my laptop tomake calls. If I callefd another Skype user the callwas free.
Unfortunately, I don'rt really have a lot of conversationse with high school andcollege kids, nor do I care to reall y speak to anyone undeer 25. So there's not a lot of phone numbers in mySkypew directory. However, you can use Skype to call a regula r land line and then get chargex a few centsper call. So that's what I mostly did. The problemj was the connection. It worked. Most of the But sometimes it just didn't. Sometimes I had to call back the person two or three times to get agood connection. Or speakk loudly. There were a few instances wheree I saidnaughty words.
Then ther e was this one time where I tried to participatwe in a conference call and had to make the threr other people wait whileI re-called the call-ihn number a few times until there was no cracklint sound on the phone. That was fun too. So I stopped using Skype. Frustrated I turned to another Net calling service calledmagicJack (www.magicjack.com). No, this has nothinyg to do with changing the tires ofa car. And ther e was no pleasure involved. For $40 magicJacjk ships me a little unit that I plug into the USB port of my I then hook my officw phone intothe unit.
After installinv the program I'm able to make phons calls from my regularphone (not the headset I boughrt from Staples … bye-bye $20). Like Skype, magicJack placess its calls overthe Internet, alongb with the other 100 trillion bits of informationb crossing the same pipelines. See where I'm goinv here? Their deal is that you can make unlimited call s you want to anyone in the UnitedState (I'm told they're working on overseaes plans) for only $50 per year. I did the math and that' $550 less a year than I'm spendinb on my office line, so there you go ... magic ! Unfortunately ... not so magical. Why? Same thing with It worked. Most of the time.
I sufferee from the occasional disconnected calls or calls that had to be or calls thatjust didn't sounds like a very good call at all. More naughty More blood thinner required. In the end I broke down and kept myofficee line. You win Verizon. I just need thingds that work as they promised towork ... all the time. I have enougyh headaches in my life. I have kids and a mortgaged and dandruff. I can't sit arouned and worry that an important conversation with a prospectivw customer is going to get cutoff orsound Verizon's line in my officw works all the time. It's one less hassles to deal with.
I still keep the magicJack and Skype serviceasbecause I've had occasion to use them when Most likely I'll forget to cancel my subscription so now I'll be payiny an extra $50 a year for next to But I'm a penny pincher. Not a cheapskate. Sure, it'sz less expensive to use these Netcallingv services. But I'm sacrificing some quality. Some I'm giving myself more headaches. To me, it'sw not worth it. These technologies are great for kids or But to rely on them forbusinesss purposes, at least so far, isn'tt a great idea for me.

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