sundance-communications.com/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX VoIP & Cloud Phones, Hosted PBX, General IP Phones VOIP....someones observations

Oliver here. I'm honored to learn that my pathetic scribblings have reached such an august audience. I shall have a word with that Paul person.

The barkeep in the establishment in which I am currently sucking up bandwidth has an excellent supply of a good import pilsner on draught, so I am inclined to write at length, and yet type badly. Do bear with me, kind readers.

Many of you have made excellent comments. I certainly don't object to combining the wired plant for greater efficiency, etc, nor the idea of garden-variety VoIP for new deployments.

My point is summarized in one word: Skype.

Gentlefolk, I do not want a phone on my desk. It's awkward. It takes space. It has an utterly useless GUI, one that would never make it into production nowadays.

Why, why, why, replace my over-buttoned Nortel station instrument with an over-buttoned Cisco station instrument; units indistinguishable were it not for the corporate logo?

Give me a better phone, one that follows me, like Skype, one that integrates with my laptop, like Skype. Do not replace my buggy whip with a titanium buggy whip - you miss the point, good gentlepersons.

Ahh, the next pint has arrived. Prost!

Want to actually get VOIP that is correctly done? Look at Cbeyond...best effort ahem skype, doesn't cut it.

What are your thoughts about using a Samsung system and their SoftPhone application? I hear that between their in-skin Unified Messaging to Outlook and SoftPhone for the PC's that makes the PC act as a phone, it a great combination for remote users??? Prost back at you!

I'm sorry but I don't believe that VOIP is ready to sit on every desk in an office. VOIP has a niche in the market but that is it. A good rule of thumb for VOIP is if you expect cell phone quality you won't be disapointed.

The Samsung softphone is great as long as you have good bandwidth and you don't need to go from a LAN to a WAN and vise versa. I have used it but you have to change the programming in the switch depending on where you use it. Samsung is aware of this bug and had plans to address it but I don't know if it has been done yet. I have gotten a few Bluetooth devices to work with it also.

If you are wanting a good quiality VOIP product I would look into the Shoretel product line. Works great for remote users and in office. No changes needed if you are a remote verse onsite.