[Shop-talk] Off topic VOIP phones and services

[Tim]

I have had Vonage in my house. We had basically no problems with it. Customer service is a bit of a pain as no one who answers the phone has English as their first language, but, again, have had very few problems, I only had to call customer service twice I think. We used a regular cordless house phone with no issues.

We have two different polycom units where I work: One is PC based PVX software and seems to work fine but you are limited to the size of the PC screen. The other unit is a stand alone codec that I think is a 7000vsx (attached to a 46" LCD screen). Most of the time the picture on this is very nice but quality is affected by older equipment on the other end of the connection. There is also an echo problem once in a while but I believe that is being caused by the set up on the other end of the connection. Both of these were a pain for our firewall team to configure firewall rules to get connectivity with outside entities. Both of our polcoms system use IP to IP connections right over the internet. 

Tim


---- eric at megageek.com wrote: 

=============
As you know, I'm stuck here in Afghanistan.  I have been tasked with 
finding a VOIP provider and phone to use.

Since I have no friends back home that want to talk to me, I haven't used 
any of these services to any extent.  I do have a free "Voxalot" account 
to call an IP phone in my house to talk to the housesitter, but it's a 
pain to use and maintain.

So my first questions is, can anyone tell me which is better Vontage or 
Skype?  (and why?)

I have a pretty good internet connection here finally (1mb down and 512 
Up), but we need a REALLY good speaker phone for calls back the US.

Which company is better and which speakerphone works the best with them? I 
know that "magic jack" lets you use any standard phone, but it has 
advertising built into its paid service.

So if you can recommend a speakerphone as well, that is cool.

Price really isn't a big deal as I would image the phone and service 
shouldn't be more than $500.

(BTW, I'm looking into getting a Polycom system as well, is there one of 
those that works on VOIP?)

Thanks.

Moose (Who still has no idea how long I'll be stuck here.  I even started 
to take Dari language lessons!)

"Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational 
being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory." Ralph 
Waldo Emerson
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