Member Soft/Hardware Reviews

[mattpark]

A member has written a great review of a piece of VoIP hardware.
This has prompted me to start a new thread in which all future reviews will be held.

Should you have anything to contrubute, please drop me a message and i'll be sure to add it in here!

Cheers

Matt

[mattpark]

US Robotics Skype Certified Speakerphone Review - Provided by fred

Overview
The Us Robotocs Speakerphone is a little flying saucer shaped unit that is designed to allow handsfree conversations when using Skype. It has a USB connection cable to connect to your laptop/PC and does not require any external power source. There is also an input for a set of headphones should the need arise for a private conversation. There are three buttons on the top of the device. There is also a LED light. USB connecting cable and CD-Rom are included as well as a paper installation guide.

Installation
Set up consists of installing Skype from the supplied CD, or if you already have Skype on your PC/Laptop then you simply connect the USB cable to the computer. It is instantly recognised by Windows and caused no problems on that front. A blue light lit up on the device to confirm it was installed correctly. There are 3 buttons on the unit. One is to mute the microphone which turns the little LED red. The other 2 are for adjusting volume up or down. You then go into Skype's options and select Sound Devices and then choose from the drop down menu your US Robotics Speakerphone device for Audio In, Audio Out. This all went very smoothly too.

Functionality
After installation was completed I tried a test call with Skype. This is where it all went horribly wrong! After speaking towards the device in my test call I was then greeted with the results. I could here the words I had spoken but it was very muffled with alot of background fuzz going on. I was rather shocked at this as I had read several reviews of this unit and they all gave it glowing reports. I then looked up the Troubleshooting guide supplied with the installation leaflet but no matter what I did I just couldnt get the sound quality to improve. I tried out a call using the device with a friend who instantly complained that he could hardly hear me. It got so bad that he refused to carry on with the call as he couldn't here me properly! (he is my best friend and will call a spade a spade!) I then attempted to use the device on 2 other computers. However I ended up with the same results. In the end I gave up and took it back to PC World. I enquired if I could test it out on one of their computers but they said that none of their store pc's was connected to a broadband service. So I got a refund. I was offered another unit but I wasn't too keen, especially as they couldn't show me it working in the shop.

Conclusion
After my week with the US Robotics Speakerphone I would have to say that I cannot recommend it as it simply did not do what it says on the box. This may well have been a one off faulty unit but I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who has got it all to work perfectly. So, in conclusion I can only give this unit 2/10.

Fred.