voIP alternatives

[Claies]

So me being paranoid against corporate proprietary madness, I'm looking for more open alternatives to Skype. I'd like a more subjective evaluation of the dozens of them out there than Wikipedia offers.

Please humor me.

(and somehow I'm looking for this before even getting a mic, but don't ask)

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Claies

So me being paranoid against corporate proprietary madness, I'm looking for more open alternatives to Skype. I'd like a more subjective evaluation of the dozens of them out there than Wikipedia offers.

Please humor me.

(and somehow I'm looking for this before even getting a mic, but don't ask)

Screw the microphone, does your computer have Bluetooth? Do you have a Bluetooth headset for your cellphone? Great, just use that! It's what I do - give you nice sound quality and you're not wired down to your system.

It's actually been a while since I looked into VoIP offerings. The one I liked (but didn't use) was Sunrocket - good pricing and fair coverage. My father uses a service called Galaxy. I don't know how the pricing is, but they give you GREAT national and international coverage. Japan isn't covered, unfortunately, but a load of other countries are. He's also managed to link it to his cellphone somehow, so that he can dial the Galaxy servers and then make a call out through his VoIP number (a sort of proxy by cellphone). Aside from making calls through his computer, he also has a box so that his house phones are connected to the number, as well - so he can use it a bit more "naturally" when he's at home. That's a pretty versatile service!

Note: neither of the above are free, sorry if I misunderstood what you were asking for

[Claies]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Screw the microphone, does your computer have Bluetooth? Do you have a Bluetooth headset for your cellphone? Great, just use that! It's what I do - give you nice sound quality and you're not wired down to your system.

It's actually been a while since I looked into VoIP offerings. The one I liked (but didn't use) was Sunrocket - good pricing and fair coverage. My father uses a service called Galaxy. I don't know how the pricing is, but they give you GREAT national and international coverage. Japan isn't covered, unfortunately, but a load of other countries are. He's also managed to link it to his cellphone somehow, so that he can dial the Galaxy servers and then make a call out through his VoIP number (a sort of proxy by cellphone). Aside from making calls through his computer, he also has a box so that his house phones are connected to the number, as well - so he can use it a bit more "naturally" when he's at home. That's a pretty versatile service!

Note: neither of the above are free, sorry if I misunderstood what you were asking for

My fault for not adding "free" to the requirements.

I was asking for evals of any other popular clients that use open, non-proprietary protocols (unlike Skype). You kinda opened my eyes to other things, actually (voIP cell phone -> computer sounds neat), so no harm done.

[WanderingKnight]

I believe there's Ekiga, GTK based software for Linux. It's integrated with the basic Ubuntu install.

I'll be damned if I have any idea on how it works, though. I know next to nothing of VoIP, never having used it before.