Why do I need VoIP?

That is the question I seem to be asked a lot lately.

The fact of the matter is that if you have a phone and phone services then you probably don’t need voice over IP.  As long as you can pick up the phone dial a desired number and connect to the desired person, talk to that person, hang up and call some one else the need has been met.

I have a cell phone, a home phone and an office phone.  The last thing I need in my life is another phone.  But what if I could do more with one phone than I could with all these different phones?  What if I could take all of the phones in my life and turn them in to one phone offering all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks?  What if I could equip my office with a phone system costing a tenth of what a TDM costs?  What if I could give every user the power to use a software application to configure every feature on their phone without having to sit all day listening to voice prompts and punching buttons?  What if I didn’t need to pay the phone company for every little service, such as: voicemail, call forwarding, call waiting, music on hold etc?  Would that be worth something to us?

I say let the revolution begin.  I say let me pay for one or two phone lines to my home and that’s it.  I will in power myself to provide and control all other services. 

Here are some links to sights anyone who is considering VoIP should look at before deciding just how they want to proceed.  This should make some companies very nervous.

www.asterisk.org

www.digium.com

I should say that this won’t be the answer for everyone.

2:43:25 PM    

TJ’s last blog entry

I finally found some time today to catch up on reading some of blogs I link to.  Troy’s latest entry on the Internet illiterate is a very valid and important read.  I do not consider myself Internet illiterate, I often joke that my biggest personal goal is to back up the entire internet.  It surprises me that there are many people who think I can actually do it.  They say things like “I believe you already have” or “how much longer will it take?”   I find myself so busy at times that keeping up with patches or making adjustments to applications to make them less vulnerable to attack is a hard thing to do.  With people like Troy to help remind me how important it is to make the effort to be secure I am getting much better.  I recommend that everyone try to monitor his entries daily.

Thanks Troy.  Let’s hope that some day you will wake up enough people and free them from the evil program Agent Smith.

9:55:21 PM    

Novell to Acquire SUSE LINUX

http://www.novell.com/news/press/pressroom/webcast.html

This seems to be a company that has no idea what they want to be in the market place.  I remember a few years back Novell ended up the owner of UNIX.  At one time they had a huge interest in Caldera Linux.  Now they want to buy SUSE and build Netware to run on top of Linux?    Lately I have been finding more and more value in running a Linux operating system and open source software applications and services.  I am finding more and more that previous concerns I had about support for free products are changing.  I have a harder time these days getting support that has been paid for that getting support from other users and in less time.  In my opinion this is nothing more than Novell trying to tell customers they have something worth buying.  If administrators want to run Linux then they should just run Linux.  They don’t need something like Netware running on top of it.  If they like Netware they should just stick with it.  There is plenty of software out there that will provide for all the needs that Netware will provide and it won’t cost thousand of dollars in Licensing.  Take a look at www.freshmeat.net and www.sourceforge.net before you buy Netware for Linux.  Make sure you are paying for something of value and not just compiled versions of software someone has already offered for free.

10:27:23 AM