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

ulyanaimiiurebor.blogspot.com
Because that's what the idea was. I woulds replace my home officetelephone line, whicyh I only use for outgoing calls, and instead start making all of my callsx over the Internet. This way I could pockett the $50 a month I've been givingg to Verizon and use those savings to buy more important things. Like … food. Except it really didn't turn out that way. Why? Becausde the Internet phone services I triedworkeds ... but just not all the Which is typical of most For example, I played arounds with Skype (www.skype.com) for a few weeks. Not bad.
Signing up for the service was free and the headser that I purchased from Staplesfor $20 only had to be replaceds once (I do not advise lending one' s headset to a 12 year old. Enough said). installing the Skype application on mylaptop didn't cause it to lock up or crasgh on me. So for that reason alone I felt that things were Once upand running, Skype did as promisedf … just about all of the time. I used the littlew computer generated keypad on my laptop to make If I called another Skype user the callwas Unfortunately, I don't really have a lot of conversationw with high school and college kids, nor do I care to reall y speak to anyone under 25.
So there's not a lot of phon e numbers in mySkype directory. you can use Skype to call a regular land line and then get chargedr a few centsper call. So that's what I mostly did. The problej was the connection. It worked. Most of the But sometimes it just didn't. Sometimee I had to call back the perso n two or three times to get a good Orspeak loudly. There were a few instances where I saidnaughty words. Then there was this one time where I trief to participate in a conference call and had to make the three other people wait whileI re-called the call-in numbet a few times until there was no crackling sounr on the phone. That was fun too. So I stoppefd using Skype.
Frustrated I turned to another Net calling service calledmagicJacok (www.magicjack.com). No, this has nothing to do with changinbg the tires ofa car. And there was no pleasuree involved. For $40 magicJack ships me a little unit that I plug into the USB port of my I then hook my office phone into the After installing theprogramk I'm able to make phone calls from my regulaer phone (not the headset I boughgt from Staples … bye-bye $20). Like Skype, magicJacl places its calls overthe Internet, along with the othet 100 trillion bits of informatiohn crossing the same pipelines. See whered I'm going here?
Their deal is that you can make unlimitedx calls you want to anyoned in the UnitedStatess (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'n spending on my office line, so there you go ... magic ! Unfortunately ... not so magical. Why? Same thingg with Skype. It worked. Most of the I suffered from the occasional disconnected calls or calls that had to be or calls thatjust didn'gt sound like a very good call at all. More naughty words. More blood thinner required. In the end I brokwe down and kept my office Youwin Verizon. I just need things that work as they promised towork ...
all the I have enough headaches inmy life. I have kids and a mortgagre and dandruff. I can'yt sit around and worry that an important conversatiomn with a prospective customer is going to get cutoffv orsound horrible. Verizon's line in my officer works allthe time. It'sw one less hassle to deal with. I still keep the magicJack and Skype serviceszbecause I've had occasion to use them when traveling. Most likelhy I'll forget to cancel my subscriptionj sonow I'll 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 these Netcallinh services. But I'm sacrificing some quality. Some dependability.
I'k giving myself more headaches. To me, it'a not worth it. These technologies are great for kidsor socializing. But to rely on them for businesds purposes, at least so far, isn't a greart idea for me.