James at the end of a post about a Skype install/uninstall issue, has drawn attention to a novel idea, Skype On a Stick. VoIP on a Stick isn’t a new idea, and actually, I’ve had conversations with other telecom folks on this exact subject with client Popular Telephony.
In my mind, and I’m sort of echoing James here, this would be rather neat.
But the idea isn’t so new. During the Internet Telephony show in Miami this past February, Pulver.com’s Scott Kargman pointed me towards a booth that was giving away VoIP on a Stick, a Softphone on a USB memory stick.
Hot Dog, I said and off I went to find the bone. When I finally installed it and ran it on a few different high powered PC Laptops which have out of this world audio, trust me, XTEN’s PRO, Light and EyeBeam sound like desk phones, I got nothing like that when I used the i2Telecom service other than a bill for activation that wasn’t worth it.
In a word the service was horrible. Words like garbled and muddy would be understatements. There was no QoS at all.
While the VoiceStick may be a useful “in a pinch” type of service, it sure didn’t measure up to a real VoIP service or come close to what I’ve used of late on the same PC’s and even a Mac. That’s the Broadvoice/XTEN Eyebeam combo which I’m thrilled by.