Skypegear Roundup: 5 bits of miscellanea

Five recent bits of Skype Gear and Skype-related miscellanea rounded up on the internets:

1. A Mini-review of the Netgear SPH200D
2. A Frugal Skype Overview
3. A Mac Hardware-Skype Experience
4. A Series of Tubes: The Internet
5. A Catastrophe! The internet crashes.

###1. Netgear SPH200D Review

This week Tracy from Tracy and Matt's Technology Blog did a mini-review of the Netgear SPH200D.

"I'm very impressed with this unit and the quality of the calls is superb."

Not to keep mentioning how cool this thing is, but the SPH200D is perhaps my favorite Skype product. The sound quality is great and it's very easy to use. I even convinced my parents to get one after we reviewed it. Because it plugs into their router, it's always a good time for me to call them on Skype--they don't have to worry about having the computer on or having a headset nearby.

###2. Skype Overview

On the personal finance blog Wise Bread, Justin Ryan gives a nice overview of what Skype can do

"The reason I love Skype isn’t because it's feature packed. I love it because it’s cheap."

He has a Cordless DualPhone and seems to like it.

###3. Mac Experience

Andrus over on the Mac Blog has already mentioned this story about Joe Kissell's experience finding Skype gear for his Mac.

"Simply performing the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion of sound to operate the microphone and speaker, respectively, is not problematic: plenty of USB audio devices work brilliantly on any modern Mac without any extra drivers or other software at all. It's the connection to Skype in particular that requires software mediation - software is needed to take the input from the buttons on the handset and send them to Skype, or to tell the handset to ring when a Skype call comes in, for example. And few USB handsets offer such Mac software."

He found a third-party driver that did the trick; as Macs continue to get more popular there will surely be loads more Certified-for-Mac products--the Futiro line is a recent addition (in the shop here).

###4. Series of Tubes