VoIP & Convergence
Connecting existing phones to VoIP
Let us start with a question that arose while we were testing USB drives: Does anyone know how to turn off the stupid Windows alert that says "This device can perform faster if you connect it to a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port"?
This is shown when you plug a USB 2.0 device into a USB 1.1-compliant port, and it is a really stupid message if you don't, in fact, have a USB 2.0-compliant port, which is something Windows can easily determine.
Another amazingly dumb message we got when we were trying to view an unformatted USB drive with Windows Explorer was "Volume information for this disk cannot be found." OK, we have no problem with the message so far, but that was followed by "This may happen if the disk is a 1394 or USB device on a Windows 2000 machine."
What this alert really says is that the Microsoft engineers couldn't be bothered to test which operating system they were running on and apparently figured that a generic but useless message would cover enough ground so they could get on to a more interesting project.
Anyway, this week, more VoIP, specifically devices to VoIP- enable existing phones.
The first of these is the Internet Phone Wizard (IPW) from Actiontec, which is designed to provide access to two lines: A VoIP line using Skype and an optional plain old telephone service (POTS ) line.
The IPW measures about 4.5 by 3.25 inches by 1 inch and has three ports - two RJ11s for an incoming phone line and telephone handset, and a USB port to connect to your PC (note that the IPW is powered by the USB port - in other words, it doesn't need a power supply, aka a wall wart).
Installing the required USB drivers is straightforward (the IPW runs only on Windows 2000 and XP so far).
Calls can be made and received using either line and you can put either line on hold to take a call on the other.
The IPW is more comfortable to use than the typical Skype PC headset and that makes it worth getting if you are a Skype user, even if you don't use it with a POTS line.
The device is more or less flawless, except that it didn't work as an incoming line to our Siemens Gigaset two-line telephone. We have yet to find out why but suspect the signal-voltage levels generated by the IPW are too low.
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