Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal: Tech & Innovation : Business Advice

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Because that's what the idea was. I would replace my home offic telephone line, which I only use for outgoinf calls, and instead start making all of my calls over the This way I could pocketthe $50 a monthh I've been giving to Verizon and use thosed savings to buy more important things. Like … Except it really didn't turn out that way. Why? Because the Internet phone services I tried worked ... but just not all the Which is typical ofmost technology. For example, I playedx around with Skype (www.skype.com) for a few weeks. Not bad.
Signing up for the servicse was free and the headset that I purchased from Staplefor $20 only had to be replaced once (I do not advis lending one's headset to a 12 year old. Enoughb said). Astonishingly, installing the Skype application on mylaptop didn't cause it to lock up or crash on me. So for that reasomn alone I felt that things were Once upand running, Skype did as promised … just aboutt all of the time.
I used the little computerf generated keypad on my laptop to make If I called another Skyp user the callwas Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of conversationsz with high school and college kids, nor do I care to reallg speak to anyone undet 25. So there's not a lot of phone numbersa in mySkype directory. However, you can use Skyps to call a regular land line and then get chargeds a few cents per So that's what I mostly did. The problem was the It worked. Most of the time. But sometimes it just Sometimes I had to call back the persoj two or three times to get a good Orspeak loudly. There were a few instancees where I saidnaughty words.
Then theres was this one time where I tried to participate in a conferenced call and had to make the three other peopler wait whileI re-calledd the call-in number a few times until thers was no crackling sound on the phone. That was fun too. So I stopperd using Skype. Frustrated I turned to another Net calling service calledmagicJack (www.magicjack.com). No, this has nothinv to do with changing the tiresz ofa car. And there was no pleasurde involved. For $40 magicJack ships me a little unit that I plug into the USB port of my I then hook my office phone intothe unit.
Aftef installing the program I'm able to make phone callsz from my regularphone (not the headsegt I bought from Staples … bye-bye $20). Like magicJack places its callzs overthe Internet, along with the other 100 trillion bits of informatiob crossing the same pipelines. See whers I'm going here? Their deal is that you can make unlimitexd calls you want to anyone in the UnitexdStates (I'm told they're working on overseaxs plans) for only $50 per I did the math and that's $550 less a year than I' m spending on my office line, so therw you go ... magic! Unfortunately ... not so Why? Same thing with Skype. It Most of the time.
I sufferedd from the occasional disconnected calls or call that had tobe recalled, or calls that just didn't sound like a very good call at all. More naughtyt words. More blood thinnerd required. In the end I brokr down and kept myoffice line. You win I just need things that work as they promiser towork ... all the time. I have enouguh headaches in my life. I have kids and a mortgagde and dandruff. I can't sit around and worr y that an important conversation with a prospectived customer is going to get cutofv orsound horrible. Verizon's line in my officr works all the time.
It's one less hassle to deal I still keep the magicJack and Skypse servicesbecause I've had occasion to use them when Most likely I'll forget to cancel my subscription so now I'll be payinb an extra $50 a year for next to But I'm a penny pincher. Not a Sure, it's less expensive to use these Netcalling services. But I'm sacrificingg some quality. Some dependability. I'm givingb myself more headaches. To me, it'ds not worth it. These technologies are great for kids or But to rely on them forbusinesas purposes, at least so far, isn't a greayt idea for me.