I have a somewhat checkered history with VoIP. On the one hand, I really like making Skype-to-Skype calls. The quality tends to be great, I have some friends I make video calls with, and it’s hard to beat the price. One the other hand, a recent employer tried to switch everyone to VoIP for home offices, and the results were mixed. The system they used wanted a serious (and very reliable) broadband connection. There’s nothing like the need for reliable broadband to point out just how rare it really is out in the real world. Anyway, there’s a new VoIP system out that may be a great answer for folks who travel between public internet kiosks or just don’t want to load new software on their computer.

GizmoCall is based on Flash technology, and doesn’t require any client software beyond the Flash plugin. You get a few minutes a day of free calls to regular phone numbers, and reasonable rates after that. The folks over at LifeHacker have looked at GizmoCall, and seem to like it, though judging from their forum messages it may be a short-term victim of its own success. With Google and others jumping into the VoIP pool it’s likely that computer-based calling is going to get very interesting in 2007.

Categories: Consumer, General computing, Software
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My buddy Brian is as serious about looking at new toys as I, and he gets some great ones. I’ve spent a fair amount of time lusting after the Lenovo tablet computer he totes around, but I’ve never been able to justify paying the difference between a standard laptop and a tablet with similar specs. Now, Popular Mechanics has named the Toshiba Portege R400 its Gadget of the Week, and it looks like a very cool machine. The R400 incorporates a number of the hardware gadgets (like the Personal Information Assistant) that Microsoft discussed over a year ago, but have been slow to make their way onto shipping hardware.

I’ve been doing more and more with OneNote, and it makes good use of the handwriting capabilities of a tablet, but towards the bottom of the Popular Mechanics blog entry you run smack into the major problem of the R400: it’s danged expensive. I know myself, I tend not to buy the stripped-down model of anything, and paying three large for a laptop when you can get very capable portable computers for well under two grand just doesn’t seem right.

While I’m waiting for the price to come down, I’m going to try out some of the USB writing tablets available to plug into my current laptop. I’ll let you know how that goes…

Categories: General computing, Hardware
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One of my wishes for Vista is better peer networking. I was thinking a lot about that after a recent family support call. As usual with these issues, a new computer was brought into the Windows peer network, and suddenly computers that had been happily cooperating couldn’t (or wouldn’t) talk to one another. I’ve run into this at various times over the years, and can’t say that there’s been a consistent cure for the problem.

In the most recent case, the cause turned out to be the most basic: a firewall hadn’t been properly configured. Most firewalls (and you know you should have one installed on each machine) don’t configure any “safe” zones outside the machine itself. We had to tell the firewall that the home network was safe and, having done so, the networking proceeded in good order. If you’ve verified that your firewall is set up properly, then one of the following sources might do the trick:

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  Why Can’t I See My Computers on the Network?

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  Troubleshooting Browsing with Microsoft Network Clients

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  Microsoft Knowledge Article Base

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  User Problem Solving

Now, it should go without saying that you should try the fixes that don’t involve going into the registry first. I’ve done a fair amount of registry hacking over the years, and I hesitate to recommend it to any but the most experienced users.

Categories: General computing, Networking, Software
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