Anyone use Vonage for their home phone?

[CROSE]

I've been a Vonage customer since 2004 and have always wished for a way to record calls and block numbers. I looked at other services and handset options but couldn't find anything that would be seamless. Then I came across this little app today and installed it on my home server. It has met all my expectations. I can record any call and it saves both sides of the conversation to a .wav file, I can block up to 1000 numbers and it just dumps those telemarketers right into my VM. No phone ringing or new caller ID number.

It's available for Windows, Mac's and a couple flavors of Linux. The download is free but it has a series of beeps when recording. The license is $89. I got it mainly for the blocking ability. The install and setup took about 5 minutes.

Sorry if this sounds like spam. I'm just really impressed with what this software does and how easy it integrated into my VoIP setup.

Here's a link if anyone is interested.

http://www.penbaynetworks.com

 

[jmunro123]

I tried Vonage a about a year ago. I needed a phone number in a different city so thought I would try it. I ended up getting rid of it as the quality was not that great. I am basically in sales and on the phone a fair bit and people would keep asking me if there was something wrong with the phone. That was distracting to the conversation and the purpose of the call so I got rid of it. One thing however - dropping the service took an hour on the phone with VISA. It was very hard to cancel.

 

[CROSE]

I've had pretty good luck so far. When I first got Vonage I had to do a lot of tweaking to my router to get decent quality but my internet speed has increased since then so I didn't have to do anything to my latest router. I still have problems when calling small markets though. I have a friend in a town of about 2000 and they have their own phone company. I swear they haven't upgraded their equipment since the 60's, but that's the only area I have trouble with. Most of my family are in the twin cities and the quality is good. I've read the horror stories about trying to cancel the service. Anything to squeeze you for an extra buck or 2.

 

[Summer Fun II]

Gmail phone its free. :smt001. I made over 5.000 calls with it so far. :smt038 . :smt038

 

[CROSE]

For being an IT guy, I'm pretty low tech when it comes to cell phone's. My company provides me with one so I don't have to pay for it and they're pretty liberal regarding it's use. It does have a camera and bluetooth and I like that I can pair it up with my truck's OnStar setup. On the other hand, I think I've gone a little overboard on my home computer network.

View attachment 19873

 

[Alegria]

LOL that is some network you have their! See that there is room to expand. Just what every home needs a 7TB RAID and blade servers!!

We've been Vonage customers for 8 years now no issues at all. Great international rates. Cut our land line years ago.

 

[CROSE]

It's definitely a beast. I hate opening my electric bill every month. It has 3 server chassis. The top one has 8 hot swap bays and the bottom 2 have 20 each. In the top I have 4 500 GB drives configured for RAID 1+0 and the OS (Windows Home Server) runs on that. I have Link Aggregation enabled as well so I get 4GB network speed. I needed that when my kids were still home. The next chassis is just a drive array and I have it filled with 1TB drives. The 3rd one is empty right now but as I collect more movies and music I'll start to populate that. I'm using about 12 TB's right now but a good chunk of that is from folder duplication. I love being able to turn on my media center pc and watch my digitized Blu-Ray's and DVD's or listen to my ripped CD's.

I'm very happy with my Vonage service too. I'm surprised they haven't offered anything like call recording or per number call blocking but as long as 3rd party software is available I can't complain to much