GazGuzla

If you ask somebody in Massachusetts about Skype, they will likely have no idea what your talking about. After reading about the millions of overseas users making cheap phone calls, I decided to try it. I spent $250 on a Netgear SPH200D, signed up for SkypeIn and SkypeOut. Shortly after installation, my cell phone rang. It was the first sign things were not going well initially. No ring, garbled voice, static, you name it I had it. Two tears later, I have become a big Skype fan. Two things that changed my feelings – the introduction of a $3 a month Skype Pro package, and learning how to optimize the voice quality.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Choosing a Home Phone service provider is not as clear as it used to be. What was once picking a local and long distance carrier with the best price now has the added option of VoIP. To oversimplify the description – VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) uses the Public Internet to send and receive phone calls. VoIP Phones are usually connected to your Router or Access Point along with your PC and Xbox.

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Popularity: 21% [?]

There are many different options out there for a Local Email GUI, and most of them have one thing in common. You can’t determine which mail came from which account with a causal glance. Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, and Trash folders are combined, leaving you to figure out which account they came from. If you have multiple pop mail accounts, Windows Live Mail Desktop may be a good choice. Each mail account added will have a separate Inbox, Drafts, Sent, and Trash Folder, with the unread contents of each folder marked with a (#). There are combined “Unread e-mail”, “Unread from contacts”, and “Unread feeds” views, if you only want to see unread email or feeds from all accounts in one view. Once email is marked as “read”, the email is now listed in the separate account inbox. That’s really good for automatic sorting by account. Replies automatically change to that account. If you get a @live.com email account, you can share contacts between the local GUI and web email at work.

Windows Live Mail Desktop can be installed using the Windows Live Installer. Be sure to uncheck the options you don’t want prior to downloading the executable, or you’ll get other apps you don’t want or need. Updates are bundled into standard Microsoft Update.

Popularity: 62% [?]

If you use shareware, freeware or beta software, you know updates occur quite often, and its a pain to go through each app and click on the update button, just to find you have the latest version. Filehippo.com has a application called the “Update Checker” (udc.exe) that you can download and install locally. It scans your system for applications and compares with the latest version loaded on Filehippo.com.

Filehippo does not have all applications, nobody does. They do have most of the popular software. To be sure the update checker will find all your applications, you may want to search for them at the site. Follow the Vista blogroll link on the right sidebar of this site. Once you get to Filehippo, information on UDC is top right.

Popularity: unranked [?]