this makes me sad. + new home VoIP service
why would someone go through and delete all their posts on here, yet not just delete their account?
actually i was more disappointed to find a few friends' names highlighted but they had subsequently removed all content from their page. makes me feel like i'm missing out since i haven't been on here in a looooong time.
i guess it's just hard for me to understand why someone would go to certain lengths to alienate friends / acquaintances. i guess somebody like me values as many of either as he can get his hands on.
why is google adwords (below) showing me ads for self-publishing services??? looks like they might need to work on their relevance algorithms.
just bought this thing that's basically a VoIP phone service-providing device. it's called the Ooma Telo, and Woot had it the other day for a good price ($140, regular $200-250). The interesting thing with this compared to vonage or skype is that there's no recurring fee for the service, except for relevant taxes (which amount to $3.60-something). Yep, you just buy the device and pay less than $5/month for free unlimited local & long-distance. Granted, if you already rely completely on a cell phone and have already ditched your land-line, this probably isn't for you. Also, there is a max of 5000 minutes a month of outgoing calls that you can make, so it's not meant for business. But, if you're like my family, you could save as much as $35 on your phone bill each month.
We have at&t's top land-line plan ($40) bundled with 3 Mbps DSL (should be $30, but for some reason we're being charged $33 – i should look into that). The combo saves us $5 over the price of each of those products individually, so I'll count the land-line as $35 instead of $40 (after all, it does say $35 on our bill). So far we're at $68. Now add about $11.5 in fees and $3.5 in taxes, and we're up to a grand total of about $83/month, which is what we're paying now.
Now, with Ooma: we'd drop the land-line (-$35), and dropping the land-line means we'd have to go to dry-loop DSL (+$10); then, I'm thinking dropping the land-line will also drop those fees we're paying (-$11.5), although I'm not sure about *all* of them (+$5, let's say, just to be safe). And the taxes will remain almost exactly the same. So we're looking at a new bill of somewhere around $50/month, which would mean we'd be saving $30-35 over the old plan. Cool.
Of course, with VoIP there is the downside that we'd have trouble in a power outage. Let me explain why I don't think it's a big risk to take: (1) my dad and I do have cell phones; (2) we could buy a cheap UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply, aka battery-backup; by cheap I mean $45-75) unit just for the DSL modem and Ooma thingy, which could keep them running for a good while during an outage; (3) we've relied on cordless phones around the house for a while, which also won't work without power, and very rarely have we had an outage where that presented a problem.
Yes, we can transfer our number to Ooma; no, our computer doesn't have to be on to run the thing, unlike magicJack or Skype; yes, the call quality is as good or better than a land-line, from what I hear; yes, they also say as a total package it's better than vonage, skype, magicJack, packet8, or any other VoIP service; yes, it does have E911.
And yes, the unit would pay for itself in 4 months (at the sale price I got)!
I made the mistake of springing this idea on my dad as he walked in from work. I knew I'd been told before that that was a bad idea, but for some reason I felt like this time might be different – and it wasn't. So when this thing comes in, I'll have to somehow try to get my dad to warm up to it. He says he wouldn't want to do it unless he knew someone that had it, so that he could test it out before laying out any money. Frankly that approach will only cost him the money he could be saving if he'd switch; I mean, I'd be *very* surprised to find an acquaintance of ours that already uses this device. For me, as many positive reviews as this thing has, it's gotta be worth taking the plunge.
So, I went ahead and bought it before it sold out (and yeah, it did sell out; that's 1500 units sold in less than 24 hours). My thinking is that I'll figure out how to get it going without transferring our number over just yet, so that he can test it. And then, when he approves, he could just start paying me the difference in the phone bill for 4 months, so I wouldn't be out any money.
But then, I consider not making him repay me for it, and just marking it down as repaying them for all the money they've spent on me over the years.
EDIT: now I'm seeing VoIP ads below. that's better.
actually i was more disappointed to find a few friends' names highlighted but they had subsequently removed all content from their page. makes me feel like i'm missing out since i haven't been on here in a looooong time.
i guess it's just hard for me to understand why someone would go to certain lengths to alienate friends / acquaintances. i guess somebody like me values as many of either as he can get his hands on.
why is google adwords (below) showing me ads for self-publishing services??? looks like they might need to work on their relevance algorithms.
just bought this thing that's basically a VoIP phone service-providing device. it's called the Ooma Telo, and Woot had it the other day for a good price ($140, regular $200-250). The interesting thing with this compared to vonage or skype is that there's no recurring fee for the service, except for relevant taxes (which amount to $3.60-something). Yep, you just buy the device and pay less than $5/month for free unlimited local & long-distance. Granted, if you already rely completely on a cell phone and have already ditched your land-line, this probably isn't for you. Also, there is a max of 5000 minutes a month of outgoing calls that you can make, so it's not meant for business. But, if you're like my family, you could save as much as $35 on your phone bill each month.
We have at&t's top land-line plan ($40) bundled with 3 Mbps DSL (should be $30, but for some reason we're being charged $33 – i should look into that). The combo saves us $5 over the price of each of those products individually, so I'll count the land-line as $35 instead of $40 (after all, it does say $35 on our bill). So far we're at $68. Now add about $11.5 in fees and $3.5 in taxes, and we're up to a grand total of about $83/month, which is what we're paying now.
Now, with Ooma: we'd drop the land-line (-$35), and dropping the land-line means we'd have to go to dry-loop DSL (+$10); then, I'm thinking dropping the land-line will also drop those fees we're paying (-$11.5), although I'm not sure about *all* of them (+$5, let's say, just to be safe). And the taxes will remain almost exactly the same. So we're looking at a new bill of somewhere around $50/month, which would mean we'd be saving $30-35 over the old plan. Cool.
Of course, with VoIP there is the downside that we'd have trouble in a power outage. Let me explain why I don't think it's a big risk to take: (1) my dad and I do have cell phones; (2) we could buy a cheap UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply, aka battery-backup; by cheap I mean $45-75) unit just for the DSL modem and Ooma thingy, which could keep them running for a good while during an outage; (3) we've relied on cordless phones around the house for a while, which also won't work without power, and very rarely have we had an outage where that presented a problem.
Yes, we can transfer our number to Ooma; no, our computer doesn't have to be on to run the thing, unlike magicJack or Skype; yes, the call quality is as good or better than a land-line, from what I hear; yes, they also say as a total package it's better than vonage, skype, magicJack, packet8, or any other VoIP service; yes, it does have E911.
And yes, the unit would pay for itself in 4 months (at the sale price I got)!
I made the mistake of springing this idea on my dad as he walked in from work. I knew I'd been told before that that was a bad idea, but for some reason I felt like this time might be different – and it wasn't. So when this thing comes in, I'll have to somehow try to get my dad to warm up to it. He says he wouldn't want to do it unless he knew someone that had it, so that he could test it out before laying out any money. Frankly that approach will only cost him the money he could be saving if he'd switch; I mean, I'd be *very* surprised to find an acquaintance of ours that already uses this device. For me, as many positive reviews as this thing has, it's gotta be worth taking the plunge.
So, I went ahead and bought it before it sold out (and yeah, it did sell out; that's 1500 units sold in less than 24 hours). My thinking is that I'll figure out how to get it going without transferring our number over just yet, so that he can test it. And then, when he approves, he could just start paying me the difference in the phone bill for 4 months, so I wouldn't be out any money.
But then, I consider not making him repay me for it, and just marking it down as repaying them for all the money they've spent on me over the years.
EDIT: now I'm seeing VoIP ads below. that's better.
btw: after trying this Ooma for a bit, we concluded that the delay was intolerable at times, so I'll be watching for them to improve it.