Ok, for a while now, there have been a multitude of VoIP soft phone providers on the market – for Mac’s as well as PC’s.
Having signed up with Engin a month or so ago, I decided that putting a soft phone on my Mac book was a better option than in the office – mainly due to the fact that I spend a lot of time on the road at the moment.
So, having spoken to Engin about my options, they sent me the links to be able to download their version of the soft phone. XPRO Gold – with Engin’s name on (XPROEngin).
Disappointed – doesn’t work with Leopard at all. The application crashes on start up. So, no willing to admit defeat, I started to look around for alternatives.
Enter X-Lite (from counterpath). Downloaded, installed in minutes (as per most Mac applications) – with a really straightforward configuration panel, I was up and running in no time. Logged into the Engin gateway and made my first call.
As with most VoIP services, you all hear about the quality of the calls and how bad (and sometimes good) they are including drop outs, noise, echo etc. I must admit, that after using skype for a while, (the free skype to skype version only as their payment system is a pain in the arse) hooking into the Engin service has been – from a quality perspective – awesome.
Most of the time, when I am on site, I use wireless networks. With the exception of one client, these are 802.11g (54MB) networks. Making a call from my laptop (with no headset) – across an internal wireless network – through ADSL (1 or 2) to the outside world PSTN network – fantastic.
The call quality is great, the application works fantastically, is simple to use AND, best of all – the Engin plan that I am on allows for “FREE” calls to any landline in Australia for $0.00
From a business view point – this is so cost effective, it’s not funny. $15.00 per month for as many unlimited calls as I like to any land line, and $0.22 cents per minute to mobiles. Engin – I don’t know how you do it, but thank you. Very cool.
If there are other options on the market for VoIP soft phones, I would like to hear from you.
Warm Regards,
Scott Malpass
Director
Aquafruit Media
Have you read about Deep Smarts yet?
4 Comments
Hi Scott,
it was good to read this post. We are here in Germany running a smal enterprise with 50 Leopard workstations. We first tried isoftphone from xnet. Works great with Mac Adressbook, but gives terrible echos when one softphone is calling an other.
We then went to eybeam from counterpath, after reading xlite would not work on Leopard. Perfekt no echos everything fine. Only problem:
Very often the the attended transfer does not work, caller gets lost and unattended transfer does not work at all. Also when registering to the company swichboard (elmeg) from outside the company you cannot make outgoing calls: It keeps wringing even when the other party already had picked up.
After I read your post I tried x-lite write away, it seems to work just like eybeam although they just write 10.4 an only write 10.5 as sys requirement with eyebeam.
I get the impression that I am the only one out there wanting to use the technology together with a company switchboard.
Sorry for my english, if you have any hints for me I will be more than happy
Alexander
Hi Alexander,
Thank you for your response.
Having a quick browse through the elmeg site (http://www.funkwerk-ec.com/) it looks like they support the standard SIP VoIP protocols.
It might be worth having a conversation with their technical teams to see if either X-Lite or other SIP products are suitable, and what they will/will not support out of the box.
With a majority of PABX suppliers, they all have their own spin on SIP and variations of SIP.
In regards to not being able to make outgoing calls, it sounds like a signalling issue – but I would be taking a guess as I am not a PABX tech.
Do the Elmeg people provide a softphone at all?
Looking forward to your reply.
cheers.
Regards,
Scott Malpass
Hi Scott,
thats the problem they do not support any Mac Softphones. Yesterday i talked to a Asterisk consultant. This really looks interesting. There are quite some dialers and even switchboard applications on versiontracker. We made an appointment for the May 21st. I will keep you posted. Do you have any expierience with Asterisk?
Hi Alexander,
I personally haven’t had any experience with Asterix, but I have heard really good things about it. It’s robust, stable, versatile and viable, as long as it’s implemented correctly I believe.
The forums and reviews in computer magazines and on the web are very positive.
best of luck and let me know how you go.
Warm regards,
Scott Malpass