VoIP Tips From A VoIP Newbie

I don’t claim to be an expert in VoIP (that’s Voice Over IP, or Internet telephony in layman’s terms). However, I have to retract my recent remarks on Google’s entry into the VoIP market with Google Talk. I still think they should’ve named it Gtalk, but that’s beside the point. Tonight, on our live radio show, where we usually don’t take calls over VoIP, we decided to pit Skype, Gizmo, and Google Talk against one another in a VoIP deathmatch. In trying VoIP in the past, we were always disappointed with the results - opting to go with traditional phone lines to take callers. The quality was unquestionably better over land lines. I never drank the Skype koolaid, and only have it installed because some of my friends swear by it. I even dropped Qwest for our local service in recent months and picked up Vonage. We’ve had a small amount of problems with it, but that’s par for the course. Is VoIP ready for the average user? Yesterday, I would have said no. Today, I say: yes. Google Talk is killer.

We started getting Gtalkers almost immediately; I didn’t tease my handles too far in advance, though. Should you want to participate in future shows, know that my Google ID is  chris.pirillo at gmail.com - but don’t bother calling me when we’re not live on the air, because I will not answer your calls (I might not even answer your IMs, largely because I have other things I gotta get done in the average day). Skype is yesterday’s news; with the release of Google’s application, they have introduced an amazing VoIP experience on even the lousiest of hardware. The sound quality was far superior than anything I had ever heard before (in VoIP software or on a traditional phone line), and even live listeners agreed. We even took a Yahoo! audio call during the course of the program, and it was palpably inferior. MSN? Couldn’t even get it to connect! I still remember the early VoIP days, when Cooltalk roamed the ‘Net. Google Talk changed my mind, from a VoIP client aspect. It’s still one of the worst IM programs around, but those shortcomings are easily overshadowed by its power as a true Internet voice gateway. I’m eating crow tonight; it doesn’t taste very good, but it sounds like a billion dollars. Here’s a VoIP tip for ya: try it.