cruel to be kind

Russel Shaw talks about on the UI of Skype and Gizmo and says:

But Gizmo Project’s softphone already comes with some of the bells and whistles that you have to add to Skype. One-button call record, call mapping, voice mail, more intuitive chat, integrated weather info.

I am the first one to admit, that there might be some improvements necessary to Skype, but one thing I can say about a ‘user interface’: I have not found the chat feature of Gizmo yet.

You know, the thing I use Skype 95% of the time for. For it to be intuitive, it would have need to be found first. The comments made about Gizmo mainly resolve around it being a nicer softphone – I can see that. And I want a sip-number working, because that voip protocoll is working with my fritzbox.

But as for me working on that thing …

As it seems, I can add persons without them knowing about it, because I just add them to my phonebook. Which is fine. But I would like the other side to see it (if I choose to) and add me to their book too. Yes, I can buy some callout and callin maybe cheaper than in Skype, but frankly, I don’t care. Because it is not about that.

I can’t see if somebody is online or not. It took me some time to figure out, where I do hang up. The only thing which really worked out ok was finding the echo test service (which is still a mystery to find on the skype pages) and the idea of having predefined interesting phone numbers available.

Skype works, I am happy, why should I switch as long as most of the people around me are still 100% only Skype? Btw, most of the people ‘just’ using voip absolutly hate Skype, because it is ‘just another IM client instead of a full of bells and whistle softphone’. Exactly what I wanted: Connected to every Skype-User and not have to care about SIP networks which are connected or not. And do IM – and sometimes call.

Would you like to see some other specialties of Gizmo?

You are limited to one Call In purchase per week.
You are limited to one Call Out purchase per week.

Yeah right. And I did not like the fact, that it did not accept my skype id like name, which is nicole.simon – I had to go for nicolesimon. I would have liked that to be consistent ….

But, as you can see, I did make my user. Because this seems to be a Sip account with a voicemail and I could perhaps reroute incoming calls to that box from my Fritzbox and would not need an external voicemail anymore.

Because it could be, that it is easier to record calls with it, because Skype is a pain in the neck. But that is for doing work. For the rest of the time, it is Skype. Unless Gizmo comes out with some really useful features.

Tag(s): Skype, Gizmo, Sip, voip

Tags: cruel to be kind