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You know, when I first read, "The Touch-1, which will sell for $699..." it was quite shocking until I got to the next part, "...Taiwan dollars (about $22 U.S.)"

No wonder Internet usage is taking so long to come to China.

# posted by Bill 10:28 AM

My dad just said "screw the phone company" and signed up for a cable phone with his ISP. He called me the other day, and got disconnected three times with numerous breakups in sound quality. IMHO, the tech sucks in reality, and my pop got shafted by his ISP. What's the point if your landline doesn't work as well as a 1985 cell phone? Even so, I'll wager that tightly integrated solutions like Skype will work better (at least they should!), which bodes well. But I've ditched landlines completely and use a cell exclusively for voice.

# posted by Dolemite 1:23 PM

Oh Dolemite....my cell phone does not work at all in my home in SF. I am talking zero signal bars from the company bragging about having the best signal. My first cell phone did better than that years ago.

You need to try Skype. Bill and I had our fist Skhype call and as he put it "Wow, this is better than a land line." Regular VoIP drops too many packets to be consistent for voice, although I have Vonage and it works pretty well if you set it right. But Skype is P2P so it shares the load across millions of people's connections and the quality is flawles. try it!

# posted by Alice 2:32 PM

I keep Skype running whenever my desktop is on. It's also on my laptop running the Linux version. I haven't actually used the Linux version though, I'm just lending bandwidth.

# posted by David 4:45 PM

I agree with Alice - Skype is awesome! I've been hooked since December and I'm not going back.

Not only is it cool, and geeky, but I'm saving a crapload of money off my monthly cell phone bill. I literally cut it in half, and I'm edging in on saving even more. I use cell when I'm mobile (physically moving, like in a car) and Skype for most everything else.

SkypeOut (the PC to phone service) is great too, with 2 cent rates for almost anywhere in the world - most civilized countries, anyway.

SkypeOut service is mostly 'great', but every once in a while my connections sound like I'm talking to someone in a submarine - through the water. I've had that happen 5 times out of a probable 250 calls made so far. That's as decent a ratio as my TMobile service.

I wish there were better headsets - mine is a Logitech USB headset; sounds flawless, but looks like frikin orthodontic headgear. Screams "geek!".

For folks who have a newer PDA (400MHz or up), Skype can be used on one of those PocketPCs from any WLAN. Starbucks, Kinko's, warchalking or other network horking, etc.

As my friend Leo says, "Free is the best price".

Jason

P.S. According to several Feb 2005 magazines (Mobile Computing, etc.) most major phone companies are switching their land-based services over to VoIP - or have already completely converted. So chances are, most calls you make to/from land lines are already VoIP calls in disguise. Mwahahahaha!!!

# posted by Jason in Oregon 5:15 PM

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