The Internet Hotel
Talk With Your Long-Distance Friends For Free!
A review of Internet Phone
by Craig Majaski
Internet Phone, by VocalTec, has to be one of the best new products available
for the internet today. By using the latest technology, it allows users
to actually talk over the internet instead of the standard IRC chat rooms
where you need to type everything. The uses for Internet Phone are many.
This product is perfect if you have family or relatives that live hundreds
or even thousands of miles away. If you both have the internet and Internet
Phone, you can talk to each other. What's better is that your not charged
any long distance prices; you only pay what you normally do when you're
connected to the internet. Those of you that are lucky enough to get unlimited
use on your accounts can have a field day with this exciting product. Internet
Phone is a great way to meet new people, just like chat rooms often are.
Also, I suppose it could be used for businesses if they do a lot of long
distance calling to their employees. No matter how you use Internet Phone,
you'll have a lot of fun.
Internet Phone comes on one disk and is very easy to install. Once you get it on your computer and are logged on to your internet account, you double click the Internet Phone icon and you are on your way. The first thing you'll need to do is set your voice activation level. You can do this from the options menu. From here you can adjust the volume of your voice. If you have it too low, the other person will have a hard time understanding you. If you've got the volume too high, your voice may sound scratchy to the other person. Next, you can set your user information. This is the information that other users of Internet Phone will see about you. You can put in your name, e-mail address, and a small description about yourself if you like. Finally, you're ready to begin Internet Phone.
The first thing you will need to do is pick an IRC server to connect to. If one's busy, then click on a different one. Once you are connected, you can pick which groups to join. As in regular IRC, there are many groups to choose from. If you have kids using Internet Phone, you should probably monitor their use as there are some Adult Groups. You may join up to 10 groups at once. By joining the group, your name is added to the list of people in that group. You now have the opportunity to call anyone on the list. Usually if you sit around for a bit, someone will try and call you. When someone calls you, you will hear a beeping. Afterwards, you'll be connected and ready to chat! The whole process is very simple and easy to learn. I didn't even read the instruction book the first time I tried it out.
The first time I used Internet Phone, I really didn't know what to expect. I assumed that it was usable with my current IRC rooms and I would be able to chat with some of my friends from WorldVillage. Right away, I found out that the only way Internet Phone works is if you use their IRC servers. Another misconception I had was the chat rooms themselves. I figured it would be just like a normal chat room, only with talking instead of typing. Unfortunately I was wrong. You can only talk to 1 person at a time. It would probably be too noisy with a group of people in one room, but I think it would be fun to have the ability to talk to 3 or 4 people at once. After I accepted the fact that I wouldn't be in a room with a group of people, I became a little shy. I didn't know anyone that was online. I was afraid to call anyone up and just start chatting. Luckily, there were quite a few people in the group I joined and I kept on getting called. After a couple times talking to various people from Arkansas to Tennessee, I got used to talking to the friendly folks. A really nice feature of Internet Phone is that you can see what time it is where the other person is located. That way if they don't tell you right away where they're from, you can at least know what time zone they're in.
Before I actually used Internet Phone, I wondered what the quality of the voice would be. I was skeptical that this program would actually work. After using it for a few minutes I realized that it has, for the most part, very good voice quality. Most of the people I chatted with came through crystal clear. Some of the voices had just a hint of static. I figured that was no worse than a normal long distance call. There were a few times where I couldn't understand the person on the other end. My guess is that they didn't have the voice recognition configured correctly. Also, it's very important that you have the 8 MB of RAM and at least a 14,400 baud modem. If you have a slower modem, you probably will have difficulty with the quality of voice.
While it may be a bit intimidating to use at first, Internet Phone is a new way to communicate over the internet. It's great for meeting new people and talking to friends and relatives no matter where they live. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until they develop actual chat rooms where more than two people can hold a conversation. Not only is it easy to use, it's a lot of fun as well. Give Internet Phone a try! You will be glad you did. To try a free trial copy of Internet Phone, visit VocalTec's home page at: http://www.vocaltec.com
