Skype Calls With No Strings Attached

The best thing Skype’s Internet phone service has going for it is its price: Calls are free. Usually, however, to make and receive calls, you must be attached to your PC. Now, new handsets permit you to roam around your house while connected to a Skype account. Logitech’s impressive Cordless Internet Handset is one such device.

Essentially the handset looks and operates like an ordinary cordless phone, but above its keypad is a sixline color LCD that displays all of your Skype contacts and call logs. Its base station links to your PC via USB; Logitech says that the product will offer clear calling at up to 164 feet away. I traveled just over 200 feet from the base station and still had a great connection.

Installing the phone was more difficult than it ought to have been, however. The setup software failed to start automatically, forcing me to dig through several menu layers to start the process manually. Then, after the program and drivers were activated, you need to reboot my system, to activate the newly installed driver.

Once successfully installed, the Skype-certified phone performs the various functions of Skype’s desktop application directly on your receiver. A dedicated Skype button below the phone’s keypad displays a scrollable list of your contacts, allowing you to see who is online and available to talk.

From there you can connect via free Skype-to-Skype calls. In addition you can use the handset to access fee-based Skype-In and SkypeOut services for connecting calls to and from landline and cell phones.

Drawback
When the base station is connected to your computer’s USB port, all other sound on the PC is muted. You can’t, for example, listen to MP3s until you disconnect the phone.

If you are a regular Skype user and would like to be free of your PC, the Cordless Internet Handset is an attractive, albeit imperfect, option.