steven n fettig's Jitterin' Thoughts

There are two things you learn while on the road with your laptop: whether the machines you own are actually dependable and what programs actually help when you need it. We're traveling in an area of the world where telephony options are limited despite the fact that internet access is better than most places (rather, out of the way places) I've been to. While high speed access isn't available in the rooms at the Atlantis, it is in almost all of the lounges and by the pools (where to be honest, I'd much rather have it anyway). So, when I tried 20 times to call the States and failed (because of three different reasons, unknown, "please dial your number again," and beyond unknown), I turned to my MacBook and decided to try Skype. Well, either Skype hasn't been updated to support Apple's Intel line or it is simply buggy. My experience with Skype has varied. The fact is, though, that I've never gotten Skype to work well on a Mac. It has worked well on those Windows machines I've set it up on, but not my Macs (which are the machines I want to use anyway). So, after the program crashed six times and wasted my valuable sun time, I remembered that I had read somewhere about the Gizmo Project. What the heck, I knew it wasn't a bandwidth problem (I was getting 3mbps both ways), but wasn't sure whether it was a ports issue (i.e. ports being blocked by their firewall or nat server) or an issue with the program itself. Now, I know that both Gizmo and Skype are based upon two different technologies (Skype is proprietary VoIP whereas Gizmo is based upon standards based SIP) - and I must say, this has always been a sticking point with myself and Skype; why must they use closed standards - i.e. proprietary - protocols and not allow outside inspection for security reasons - but the fact is that both of them should just work - especially to be useful. So, I downloaded Gizmo, signed up for 1000 minutes of outbound calls to PSTN numbers (i.e. real phones) and waited for the credit to hit my account. When it did, I called my voicemail number to check it out. It just worked. Except for the fact that my bluetooth headset (Motorola HS810) isn't playing well with my MacBook (nor any other computer I own), the voice calls were fantastic. I called in to work to answer a nagging question they had and that was that.
It really is nice when technology works the way it is advertised and the way you'd expect it. It would be even nicer if it would work as easily as this experiment went. So, even when Skype comes out with their video conferencing on the Mac, it may not be enough to get me to use their services again if it doesn't work as well as Gizmo did for voice calls. Mark one up for Gizmo - you've now become my primary software telephony program.