Category: Geeks r Us
Who has it? How do you like it? Do you have the $15 deal or the $24 deal? Thanks all, I'd like to hear some personal experience before I decide. It's the ability to have an UK number that grabs me the most. Well, and of course that you can use a regular phone, not calls over the computer.
Hello. I had the opportunity to try out Vonage at a friend’s house. It seemed like a good deal since it was considerably cheaper than what I had been paying for traditional landline service. However, when I began to research VOIP alternatives, I found that a service called Lingo was cheaper, just 19.95 a month, had a much nicer feature set, and allowed me to call not only the U.S. and Canada, but Western Europe. Also their tech support was very helpful the only time I ever had to call them. This was due to an error on my part when setting up the box with my router;. If anyone is interested in Lingo, drop me a private message or send an e-mail from my profile and I will send you a link which will allow you to try Lingo free for a month. If you sign up through me you will receive a $25 credit to your account if you decide to stay with them. I think the only reason Vonage is such a big name now is because of their TV advertising campaign. Their sound quality is not nearly as good either. I’ve been using Lingo since June of 2005, and have been quite satisfied.
I have Vonage now and I really hadn't had any big problem with it. about every 2 weeks I have to unplug the router and plug it back in to get the sound back to normal but that's about all. but I would be interested to try that lingo thing if it's got some more features or sounds better. I really hadn't noticed it sounding bad but shrug.
I
I don't like either Lingo or Vonage. I had Vonage, and the people I would call would complain of a beeping noise. And the sound quality sucked. As for Lingo, a close friend had it and had to have the box replaced twice in a few months. No fault of her own either. Lingo's sound quality wasn't that bad though. With Vonage too, you can be charged an early termanation fee if you drop them before your year is out.
I now use Comcast's digital voice and it works great, and sounds the best of all. The only problem is the cost of it though. But it has more and better features than Vonage.
ZingoTel has a similar plan, including cheap European numbers (for 3 or 4 cents a minute) for $14.95. I haven't actually tried them but I am tempted, they seem to ahve all the same features as Vonage, no early termination fee, free modem and what appears to be easy set up instructions.
I think it's
www.zingotel.com
cheers
-B
I believe Lingo’s European numbers are only $9.95 with no additional charge per minute. As far as unplugging my box, I haven’t had to do that unless I was resetting my router which is a pretty rare occurrence. Comcast does sound pretty good too, but they charge too much for a very limited feature set. Also I hear that they play games with the amount of minutes you use. I know people who have used Lingo for thousands of minutes a month and didn’t get any problems as a result.
This weekend we bought a Skype phone (USB chordless phone) and set up Skype in and Skype out accounts.
It's a good deal. The phones reach from $40 to $150 (I got the expensive one because it's wireless). You plug a little thingy into the usb port, charge the phone for 14 hours, install the drivers from the cd with a few clicks and 9it integrates with your Skype seamlessly, no further actions needed.
I got my U.S. Skype # and going to set up numbers in Europe as well, each # is $12 for 3 monthes or around $30 for the year. Calls are price 2 cents per minute in the U.S. and 3 to 4 cents per minute from Europe, 3.1 cents I believe for most European countries.
Apart from the phone number charge there's no monthly fee. We made a couple of European calls, way better quality than time warner cable voip service + phone card, I was impressed (I have cable connection).
Getting a number was easy. I think it's an excellent compliment to a cell phone, I wouldn't use this for my only phone but for American calls I use my cell phone minutes anyway.
Oh, and with the Oh, and with the number you get free voicemail. Downside, of course, your computer has to be on and Skype has to be on in order for this to work.
But definitely worth a try, go Skype.
cheers
-B
Don't think this is a good company and I don't suggest it. A few years ago a company came about called Supra Telecom and had all the same features. This is not the only new company who has all these good features.