Reviews

A customer recently asked us if we could recommend to him something other than a Polycom for his conference room. I realized then that we hadn't really looked into conferencing solutions from other manufacturers, and the team immediately sought out to remedy that.

As promised in our Re-inventing the Desk Phone post, we've reviewed Altigen's iFusion iPhone dock.

If you thought you couldn't get a new high definition VoIP phone for under $50, you'd be wrong. This week, we took a look at the GXP 1405, a 2 line (supports 2 SIP accounts) VoIP deskphone from Grandstream Networks. The phone includes a 128 x 40 graphical LCD, speakerphone, RJ9 headset jack, and PoE support. The list price is $65, but you can find it available for much less from online VoIP phone retailers.

Time for a new router

Over the weekend, my home router died. Well not "died" died, per se, but began to fail to live up to my needs. It was a Buffalo WHR-HP-G300N, purchased from Amazon on sale. Total mistake. I bought it to use as a home router because the default "stock" firmware was the amazing DD-WRT firmware, probably the best firmware available for use in SOHO routers.

One way to think of the Yealink SIP-T22P is that it's the company's SIP-T28P executive phone with the dedicated memory / BLF keys chopped off, a smaller LCD, and fewer lines.

The Yealink SIP-T28P is an affordable PoE enabled, 6-line business desk phone with a 320 by 160 pixel backlit LCD, and support for wideband audio, BLF, and SMS.

Check out our full write-up of the phone here.

Multinational consumer electronics giant Panasonic recently announced the introduction of a new line of SIP phones for sale in the US. It's always nice to see another big player further embracing SIP.

"The benefits of a standards-based approach, such as with SIP phones, are especially compelling in today's business environment where every dollar counts and flexibility and reuse are highly desirable. Panasonic's SIP phones are designed to be expandable at no additional cost, without sacrificing quality.

Blink Pro is a SIP client / softphone application from developer AG projects, a company that has been implementing and supporting SIP infrastructure components for cable operators and Internet service providers since 2002. The Blink Pro app is the user endpoint of their product portfolio.

Blink Lite is a free VoIP-only SIP client from Netherlands based developer AG Projects, the same people behind SIP2SIP.info. The application is particularly user-friendly for people who are completely unfamiliar with SIP. If you choose to get a free SIP2SIP.info SIP account straight from the application, the client will automatically register using that SIP account.

This week we took a quick look at CSIP Simple, a mobile VoIP application for the Android OS. This app does not do transfers and cannot handle more than one call at time, but what it does do - making and receiving calls, integrating with native dialer, messaging via SIMPLE - it does well. OnSIP users can also register this app easily with it's built-in setup wizard.