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On Wed, 7 Sep 2011, Dan Dart wrote:
Bleh. I use google talk, sure it's not free but it isn't owned by ms...
Maybe, but I'm starting to get irritated by the amount of information google wants from me though...
I saw another google streetcar come through town a few days ago - they last visited 2 years back - why do they want more?
But really, what's open and works without nat screwing and preferably compatible?
Nothing.I went down the desk phnoe route for the family becaus it semed much easier than going round them all and installing Skype (or Ekiga) for them at the time - however that was early 3 years ago... Things seem to have changed in those 3 years, and now elderly in-laws appeared to have no problems installing Skype in Win7, and so that was that.
Interesting situation though - one with Win7, one with a Mac (In Orkney) and one with Linux (and I think the other side of the family have MS Win of some flavour and the cheapest/shittyest of broadband connections possible, but they still can use Skype)
I did notice Skype seemed to use as much bandwidth as it could (about 700Kb/sec outgoing from out site - limit is 830Kb/sec) and I can't deny that the picture quality was much better than the desk phones I have. (Limited to 320Kb/sec)
Standards based VoIP works - and works very well indeed, but only when you have control over the end-points. NAT is not really a problem when you can control it (ie. right routers, hardware/software at both ends, etc.), but when not, it can be a nightmare...
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq