Vonage!

Update on the Vonage post from August 5.

I was 100% up and running with Vonage as of August 17. This was about fifteen business days after they had requested a transfer of my existing land line from BellSouth.

Quality is superb--I can't tell a difference from the old land line. Callers see nothing different. They call the old number and talk to us. The voicemail works very well and emails the messages as an attachment if I so desire. Good stuff.

A potential downside to home VoIP is a problem with devices that need to make electronic calls out, such as Tivo/DirecTV and the like. There's a site here that talks about using the wiring in your house for VoIP, but I haven't tried it yet. The Series 2 machines for DirecTivo don't really require a callout, but they will send you the nag screen every day if you don't do it. There's supposed to a be a hack that allows the machine to use a wireless LAN to call home, and I might try that next.

Vonage!

Update on the Vonage post from August 5.

I was 100% up and running with Vonage as of August 17. This was about fifteen business days after they had requested a transfer of my existing land line from BellSouth.

Quality is superb--I can't tell a difference from the old land line. Callers see nothing different. They call the old number and talk to us. The voicemail works very well and emails the messages as an attachment if I so desire. Good stuff.

A potential downside to home VoIP is a problem with devices that need to make electronic calls out, such as Tivo/DirecTV and the like. There's a site http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html">here that talks about using the wiring in your house for VoIP, but I haven't tried it yet. The Series 2 machines for DirecTivo don't really require a callout, but they will send you the nag screen every day if you don't do it. There's supposed to a be a hack that allows the machine to use a wireless LAN to call home, and I might try that next.

We don't need a database?

I remember an article last year on Slashdot about a research project at IBM that had created a way of storing all objects an application needs in memory, with no relational database needed. That project was called Prevalence, and it was remarkable in its simplicity. There is a Java implementation of it called Prevayler.

The .NET version of it is called Bamboo.Prevalence. I'm going to do some Proof-Of-Concept work with it to see if it's interesting at all. Will advise...

VoIP

I've taken the VoIP plunge. I've decided that paying $65/month for home telephone service (when all taxes, fees, and long distance are thrown in) is simply too much. After a bit of research into the VoIP field I've decided to go with Vonage.

The box arrived yesterday and after a bit of a hiccup with my home network router, I got the service to work. I picked up the handset on my phone, and voila! Dial tone. I called my wife on her cell phone and the service works perfectly. No echo, no difference in line quality, and all this for a much lower price.

Vonage is transferring my home phone number from the current phone company to their service, so I'll post again when that is complete.