It took me a long time to finally move onto Skype, but now I don’t know how I worked without it. Sure, I still rely on my ol’ land line for in-country calls, especially the ones where I need to record interviews for stories I’m writing. It’s just plain reliable. But this afternoon, I needed to talk with the author of Scrappy Project Management, who happened to be in Hiroshima for a few weeks consulting with some of her clients, and Skype was the way we talked.

But what about those times when I don’t want to turn on my computer? Maybe I’d start using Skype for my personal calls and dump my pricey long-distance service.

That’s why I’m considering offline Internet telephony — and here’s the phone I think I could use to help me achieve it. It’s from Philips, and it goes by the memorable moniker, VOIP0801. (Probably by the time I post this, the company will have upgraded its model.)

The idea is that the phone display shows whether somebody’s online or not, and you can use the same device for regular landline calls along with voice over IP calls. If you set up the right kind of Skype account, you can also get a phone number to hand out so that people without Skype can call you too.

Pretty soon, this cheapskate will have no excuse for not calling — um, Skyping — her mom every week.

Posted on December 18th, 2007 by dian