San Antonio Business Journal: Tech & Innovation : Business Advice

xszeyluje.blogspot.com
Because that's what the idea was. I would replace my home officetelephonwe line, which I only use for outgoinf calls, and instead starf making all of my calls over the This way I could pocket the $50 a montjh I've been giving to Verizon and use those savingxs to buy more important things. Like … food. Excepy it really didn't turn out that way. Why? Becaus the Internet phone services I triedworkecd ... but just not all the time. Whic h is typical of most For example, I played around with Skypwe (www.skype.com) for a few weeks. Not bad.
Signing up for the servicre was free and the headset that I purchasexd from Staplesfor $20 only had to be replaceds once (I do not advise lendiny one's headset to a 12 year old. Enoughu said). Astonishingly, installing the Skype application on mylaptop didn'gt cause it to lock up or crash 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 generated keypad on my laptop to make If I called another Skype user the call was Unfortunately, I don't reallu have a lot of conversationas with high school and college nor do I care to reallty speak to anyone undee 25.
So there's not a lot of phonw numbers in mySkype directory. However, you can use Skypd to call a regular land line and then get chargexd a few centsper call. So that's what I mostly did. The problemj was the connection. It worked. Most of the time. But sometimesz it just didn't. Sometimes I had to call back the persohn two or three times to get agood connection. Or speakm loudly. There were a few instanced where I said naughty Then there was this one time whers I tried to participate in a conferencd call and had to make the three other peoplse wait whileI re-caller the call-in number a few timesd until there was no crackling sound on the That was fun too.
So I stopped using Frustrated I turned to another Net callinfg service calledmagicJack (www.magicjack.com). No, this has nothinf to do with changing the tires ofa car. And there 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 office phone intothe unit. Afteer installing the program I'm able to make phon e calls from my regularphone (not the headset I bought from Stapled … bye-bye $20). Like Skype, magicJack places its calls overthe Internet, along with the othedr 100 trillion bits of information crossing the same pipelines. See where I' going here?
Their deal is that you can make unlimitex calls you want to anyone in the UnitedStatesx (I'm told they're working on overseaas plans) for only $50 per I did the math and that's $550 less a year than I'mm spending on my office line, so there you go ... magic! Unfortunately ... not so magical. Why? Same thinyg with Skype. It worked. Most of the I suffered from the occasional disconnectedc calls or calls that had tobe recalled, or callss that just didn't sound like a very good call at all. More naughtyy words. More blood thinner In the end I broker down and kept myoffice line. You win I just need things that work as they promise d towork ...
all the I have enough headaches in my I have kids and a mortgageand dandruff. I can'tg sit around and worry that an important conversation with a prospectivde customer is going to get cutofg orsound horrible. Verizon's line in my office worksx allthe time. It's one less hassl to deal with. I stillo keep the magicJack and Skyper servicesbecause I've had occasion to use them when Most likely I'll forget to cancel my subscription so now I'llp be paying an extra $50 a year for next to But I'm a penny pincher. Not a Sure, it's less expensive to use thes e Netcalling services. But I'm sacrificing some quality. Some I'm giving myself more headaches.
To me, it's not worth it. Thesw technologies are great for kidsor socializing. But to rely on them for business purposes, at least so far, isn't a greaty idea for me.