Cheap/free internet calls using a normal phone - no headsets
Disadvantages:
Ringer quiet
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
There may be no such thing as a free lunch but there is such a thing as a free phone call! We discovered this when we tried Skype purely out of curiosity. You do need a PC and a decent internet connection - broadband is best. After that, the software is free from www.skype.com and you can place an "Internet Phone Call" to anyone else in the world using Skype absolutely free. It's possible to call normal phone numbers, too, using a service called SkypeOut. This is pay-as-you-go. Buy some call credits (in €10 blocks), type in a phone number and it starts to ring. Call rates are 1.4p/min for any number in most of the world (a few exceptions but it does include USA, Australia, Canada and Europe) any time of day or night. Rates to mobiles aren't too bad either.
If you want someone not on Skype to call you, you can use SkypeIn and buy up to 10 incoming phone numbers (currently €30 per year each) around the world which are routed through to you over the internet. Choose the number correctly and someone abroad can phone you for the cost of a local call to them and they don't need Skype.
So what's the catch? Well, you use your PC's microphone and speakers to do the talking and listening, which means being near the PC. A headset works better for call quality but again you're next to the PC and everyone's used to the convenience of cordless phones these days. That's where the Linksys Cordless Internet Telephony kit comes in. It's a normal phone.
In the box, you get - full instruction manual - phone base station that plugs into your PC - phone handset, rechargeable batteries and charger base - installation CD - a voucher for 60 SkypeOut minutes
Installation is straightforward even if you've never added anything to your PC before. Put the CD in the computer and it will run the software to guide you through. When told, plug the base station into one of the computer's USB ports and it completes installation. The base station is powered from the PC's USB port with no other external power supply. The base is small, measuring 61mm x 86mm x 22mm, and need not be particularly accessible unless you need to press the "Page" button when you can't remember where you left the handset.
The phone charger and handset can be put anywhere in your house. Initially, the phone needs to charge overnight. Once it has, you follow the instructions to match the phone to the PC base station. Sounds technical but it's not… our cat did it! OK, that's an exaggeration but it is easy… press a button on the base station then select a menu from the phone's screen and they find each other.
So what's this done? Well, the phone is a DECT phone. This stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications. The important bit is Digital. The phone and base communicate digitally which is superb quality (like CD and DVD are digital) and very secure. With an old analog cordless phone, someone tuning a radio to the right frequency can listen in. With digital, they can tune in but would just hear hissy static. The phone encodes the signal, sends it to the base which knows how to decode it again. It's more secure because even if someone has the same handset as you, it needs to be matched to the base station and only you allow handsets to be matched to your base… in short, no one else can use your phone line or hear your calls without you having let them.
If you have existing DECT phones, you can also point these at the Linksys base station. We tried with ours and it works great. All DECT phones can only talk to one base station at a time so it's necessary to use the phone menus if you want to switch between your existing base station and the Linksys. Range between base and handset is about 50 metres indoors or 300m outdoors. Our base is upstairs and coverage all around the house is excellent.
The handset itself looks a bit like an older mobile phone but still modern. It's in a silvery/grey finish, measures 130mm x 45mm x 25mm and has a small colour screen measuring 30mm x 20mm. It also has a covered socket on the side for a mobile type of headset which would allow you to clip the phone to your belt and be hands free. We've not tried this because the phone also has a handsfree speakerphone option. You can just put the handset on the table and activate speakerphone though you need to be fairly close for the person at the other end to hear you.
Battery life is also good at 120 hours standby and 10 hours talk time. These are the official stats but we can believe it as we've left it off the charger for days by mistake!
There are two buttons below the handset screen (a bit like a Nokia Mobile) to select menu items. On the right is Names. This allows you to add people to the phone's phonebook, view numbers and edit them.
On the left buton are the main menu options. These are: - Skype (Contacts, Status, Voicemail) - Display (Clock, Time Format, Contrast, Colour) - Sounds (ring tunes etc) - Advanced (Alarm clock, timer, stopwatch, autoanswer) - System (Register with Base, Base Select)
The Skype menu pulls all the contacts you've keyed into Skype on the PC down to the phone so you can choose one and call them. It also lets you listen to voicemail (free if you buy a SkypeIn number) and change the status so other Skype users can see if you're online etc.
The other menus allow access to features that most mobiles have like setting the display, ringtone (you can't download them into the phone but you can choose from a selection) and use the phone as an alarm clock, timer or stopwatch.
Other than that, it operates the same as any phone. Key in a number and hit the green dial/pick-up button to call. To answer, just pick it up and hit the green button. If you set autoanswer to On, just picking it up off the charger will answer. It has Caller ID so you can tell who's calling. Skype does not send any Caller ID on SkypeOut calls though - this is due to security as anyone anywhere can buy a number and it would be open to abuse if you could type in the number to display at the other end.
The one thing it has which you won't find on a normal DECT phone is the "Skype" button. This saves going through the menus and takes you straight to a list of your Skype contacts which it gets from the Skype program rather than being stored in the phone itself. Use the up/down buttons to select a name or key the first letter of the name and it'll jump down the list. Once the name has been found, hit the green button.
Quality is very good. Not quite as good as good as a landline but this is to do with the internet rather than the phone. It's very good nonetheless and after a while you don't notice. People we call even ask whether we're on Skype or the normal phone so it can't be bad!
The tone and volume you hear or send can be adjusted on your PC. It uses Windows sound settings, just like your normal PC speakers, by double-clicking the speaker icon in the bottom right of the PC screen. The Linksys shows in the setting list as a separate device so you can keep your PC speakers set how you want and Linksys set how you want i.e. they're separate.
We only found this out after one baffling incident. Someone called and we couldn't hear them. We later found out that they could hear us. They hung up and called back. Same again - we couldn't hear anything! It took us about half an hour to realise someone had clicked the speaker icon on the PC and ticked "Mute" - which muted the phone's speaker! We now leave the default device on the PC as the PC's speaker and not the Linksys so if someone hits mute, it doesn't knock the phone out.
For cost, well it's not cheap at about £70. We bought ours off the internet and found a place just by doing a search on CIT200. I should say it doesn't appear cheap because we've saved the cost in only a few months. We call relatives in the USA every day and previously the best special rate we found was 3p/min. The cost of calls has halved with Skype and even though it's pence per minute saved, it quickly builds up.
So what did we spend? Skype software Free Linksys £70 SkypeIn number £20 (€30) per year - not essential but see below Call Credits £7 (€10) for about 10 hours
What did we get? The Linksys, some call credits and an inbound number. Or to put it another way, we got a second phone line with a normal (to use) phone and very cheap or free calls. Plus our relative in the States can call us here for the cost of a local call (about 3 US cents per call, not per minute!) because our inbound number is "located" close to them.
This is supposed to be a review of the Linksys and not Skype so why is most of it so far about Skype? It's difficult to understand the benefits of the Linksys without knowing about Skype because the two are linked. We wouldn't have got the Linksys if we hadn't tried Skype… the Linksys is an accessory for Skype. The Linksys just sits there and does the clever stuff meaning we just use it like a normal phone and don't even think about it being through the PC. Which is an important point. The PC MUST be on for you to make and receive calls and you must have your internet connection available for the PC.
So why did we buy the expensive one when there are cheaper devices that you use for internet calls with your existing cordless phone? For one thing, these devices plug into your PC and your normal phone line and, for us, the two things aren't physically close together. Secondly, the other ones are either/or devices. You're either on an internet call or a phone line call. It does save call costs by calling out via Skype but you can still only use one line at a time. With the Linksys, we have our existing phones available on the phone line and the Linksys for Internet calls in/out. So, we have two lines and two of us can be on the separate lines at the same time. This may not be what everyone wants and the cost may be more than you want to spend…. but if you're in a similar situation to us, it works out very well.
The only thing against the Linksys is that the ringer is rather quiet, even on the loudest setting. You can set Skype to ring the PC speaker as well though. It's not a major downside but we have missed one or two calls if the handset's left in another room.
Which brings us to Voicemail. You can subscribe to voicemail but this is free anyway if you buy an inbound number. If you don't answer, it plays a message (or you can record your own) and it "records" the message left for you, even if you're not online. The Linksys will show missed calls on its display and you can then use the menu to see who called, when and play back any voicemails left for you.
There's also another Skype feature we tried - conference calling. You can get up to 5 people talking together and they can be on a normal phone number (at 1.4p/min for most of the world) or on Skype (free). The organiser pays the cost for all calls but at 1.4p/min, it's still cheaper than the 5p/min that voice-conference places charge and no one else pays a thing. Nothing to do with the Linksys again except that without the Linksys, I wouldn't have used Skype for the conference. It may just be me but during a long call it's nice to be able to wander about, get a drink etc. which you can't do if you're on a headset attached to the PC.
Above all the other major plus points, it's highly portable. So much so that you could easily pack the base, handset and charger when you go away and either use someone else's PC or take a laptop if you have one. Skype doesn't care where you connect from - it just needs your username and password. This means you can use it on any PC anywhere. Likewise the Linksys can be plugged into any PC. You don't even need the install CD as everything can be downloaded from the Linksys site. If you're staying abroad with friends, have a holiday home or even if away on business, this is a great way to keep in touch with the UK without huge bills. All you need is an internet connection (most hotels now provide one) and a PC.
Here's some technical info on how good your PC needs to be. The Linksys requires: - an internet connection - preferably broadband - PC with 400MHz processor or higher - 128MB RAM - an available USB port - 15MB hard disk space - Windows XP or 2000 - CD ROM Drive
If you don't have Skype installed already, it's on the CD or you can download it for free.
By now, anyone not into computers is probably thinking "What?". OK, I understand… all this info is available from your PC and the best way to get it is to find "My Computer" on the desktop, right click the mouse and select Properties. This will give you most of the info. For more details, visit www.linksys.com, go to the Support Menu, select downloads and pick CIT200 from the list. There's the data sheet and user guide available to see.
A last important safety point is that you can't make emergency (999) calls on Skype so you should have some other means of doing this just in case you need it. You don't necessarily need to keep your existing line just for this…. if you have a mobile, you can use that. Just make sure it's charged up!
In summary, the CIT200 has lots of good features but the main thing is that it frees you from being near the PC and lets anyone (who already has PC internet access) who can operate a normal phone benefit from cheap or free internet calls.
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