I've been using Skype for at least two years with, for the most part, great satisfaction. However there has always been one specific drawback -the need to have a PC switched on all the time to use it. The fix to this was clearly to have a dedicated Skype handset and earlier this year a number of dedicated Skype handsets were announced. A few months later these announcements have turned into shipping products just in time for the holiday season.
I have, however, recently purchased a Skype handset which was not among those mentioned earlier - the Dualphone 3088.
I learned about this device through the Inquirer and it seems to meet my needs more than the others. The difference is that this phone can use either the Skype network or the PSTN and hence it replaces the standard house phone.
The system consists of a handset (illustrated) and a base station which connects to the local Internet router via (fast) Ethernet and the PSTN via a telephone cable. The handset and base station communicate via DECT rather than any more IP aware protocol presumably because of the PSTN connection but I consider this to be a feature rather than a bug since I believe DECT is a better wireless voice protocol.
Installation was very simple and usage over the last couple of days has also been quite successful so I am pleased to recommend this to anyone. However it isn't perfect and I have a few suggestions for improvements, all of which I assume can be done in software.
Support for multiple Skype IDs. It is possible to log in and out of Skype but doing so requires some fairly laborious TXTing to enter the new SkypeID and password, it would be nice if there was an option to cache this info
Support for other traditional DECT phones for incoming calls and using the landline
Support for multiple 3088s from the same base station - this may be supported but it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the manual
Support for conference calls - the phone cannot apparently host a conference call.
None of these are really critical features for regular use but more like nice to haves. Hopefully some of them will show up in the near future.
Blog Home : December 2006 : Permalink
