The Business Review (Albany): Tech & Innovation : Business Advice

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Because that's what the idea was. I woulde replace my home office telephone which I only use for outgoing and instead start making all of my calls over the This way I could pocketthe $50 a montjh I've been giving to Verizohn and use those savings to buy more important Like … food. Except it really didn't turn out that way. Why? Becaused the Internet phone services I triedworkerd ... but just not all the time. Which is typicap of most technology. For I played around with Skype for afew weeks. Not bad.
Signing up for the servic e was free and the headsegt that I purchased from Staplesfor $20 only had to be replaceed once (I do not advise lending one's headset to a 12 year old. Enougjh said). Astonishingly, installing the Skype application on mylaptop didn't cause it to lock up or crasn on me. So for that reasonm alone I felt that things were Once up and Skype did aspromised … just about all of the I used the little computer generater keypad on my laptop to make If I called another Skype user the call was Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of conversations with high school and college kids, nor do I care to really speakm to anyone under 25.
So there'sw not a lot of phon numbers in mySkype directory. you can use Skype to call a regular land line and then get chargerd a few centsper call. So that'x what I mostly did. The problemn was the connection. It worked. Most of the time. But sometimews it just didn't. Sometimes I had to call back the persoh two or three timezs to get agood connection. Or speak loudly. There were a few instances wherew I saidnaughty words. Then therew was this one time where I triex to participate in a conference call and had to make the three other people wait whileI re-called the call-in numberd a few times until there was no crackling sounde on the phone. That was fun too.
So I stoppedx using Skype. Frustrated I turned to another Net calling servicd calledmagicJack (www.magicjack.com). No, this has nothing to do with changingb the tires ofa car. And there was no pleasure involved. For $40 magicJack shipe me a little unit that I plug into the USB port of my I then hook my office phone intothe unit. Afte r installing the program I'm able to make phon e calls from my regularphone (not the headset I bought from Staples … bye-bye $20). Like Skype, magicJack places its calls overthe Internet, alongt with the other 100 trillion bits of informationh crossing the same pipelines. See where I'm going here?
Theier deal is that you can make unlimited calls you want to anyond in the UnitedStates (I'm told they're workinf on overseas plans) for only $50 per I did the math and that'sz $550 less a year than I'm spending on my office line, so there you go ... magic! Unfortunately ... not so Why? Same thing with Skype. It Most of the time. I suffered from the occasionalk disconnected calls or calls that had tobe recalled, or calld that just didn't sound like a very good call at all. More naughtu words. More blood thinner required. In the end I broked down and kept my office Youwin Verizon. I just need things that work as they promisecd towork ... all the time.
I have enougu headaches in my life. I have kids and a mortgagwe and dandruff. I can't sit around and worry that an importantf conversation with a prospectiv e customer is going to get cutoff orsoundf horrible. Verizon's line in my office workz all the time. It's one less hassle to deal 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'lp be paying an extra $50 a year for next to But I'm a penny Not a cheapskate. Sure, it's less expensive to use these Netcallinh services. But I'm sacrificing some Some dependability.
I'm giving myself more To me, it's not wortb it. These technologies are greaty for kidsor socializing. But to rely on them for busineses purposes, at least so far, isn'tr a great idea for me.