A Lefty Writes

As you know, we recently set my mom up with Vonage. So far, she loves it. Seriously, all she does is talk on the phone now. As for power failures, your cell should still work (as long as you went outside, I guess).

I'll second that: Gwen's mom has Vonage. So far it's worked fine, and it was really easy to set up.

My favorite feature: the fact that you can receive your voicemail messages as .wav e-mail attachments. How fucking cool is that?

I say do it. They are all excited at work because they are switching over soon (and they'll also be switching their email over to something called Outlook, ooooh). Still, if I were running the place, I'd be more interested in upgrading from what appears to be Windows 3.1.

VOIP is GREAT. My only suggestion, get a good router. If you get a cheapo one, it tends to lose sync with your internet, then the phone goes out, then you get mad.

So here's a new question - what if I already have an Airport Express? Would I need a new router? The Airport doesn't have any ethernet outputs.

Well for the router, you can plug the express into that. The phone router usually has to plugin to the cable/dsl modem directly. It's great the folks have it and I have been using it all the time to make long distance phone calls. The only issue that I have noticed is that when I am doing some heavy internet downloading or uploading the phone gets a bit choppy. Also some of them offer you a second phone number for free that forwards to your current number. So you could have a 323 and a Boston area code.

What providers other than Vonage do people have experience with?

We are using Time Warner's VoIP option.

If you get yahoo messenger, MSN, Skype or ICQ let me know so we can have a chat.

Happy birthday!