After having my VOIP service up and running for a little over a week now, here's what I have to report:
1. The quality is generally good. I've had a handful of lengthy long-distance conversations and haven't found there to be any noticeable distortion or drop-outs.
2. Sometimes it doesn't ring. That's not to say that incoming calls don't ring. Those work fine. It's the outgoing calls that are a bit off. I'll dial the number and then after a period of silence the person I'm calling will pick up or I'll go to voicemail like any other call. It works, but I miss having the outgoing ring.
3. I'm not sure if this is related, but my internet has been a little weird lately. I've had a few instances where my network is still up and running but the internet itself doesn't work. It fixes itself if I do a quick reboot of the cable modem and router. Right now I have it set up as follows: cable modem --> VOIP box --> wireless router. I think a better system would be to have the router come first. Unfortunately the Airport Express that I use doesn't have an option to plug the VOIP box directly into it.
4. For some reason that I can't determine, my cell phone won't forward to the VOIP line. It will call the line without any problems but it won't forward calls. This was the case a day or two after I first set it up and I haven't tried it since, so maybe it was just a hiccup. I'll give it another shot tomorrow.
In conclusion, I'm pretty happy so far. I'm going to call Verizon and see what options there are to keep my land line for minimal service (911 and maybe local calls). If it's cheap enough I'll keep it for a while longer until I trust the VIOP more. Otherwise I may just go ahead and transfer the number and be done with it.