Customer Reviews

D-Link Skype USB Phone Adapter

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(56)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(26)
1 star:		(59)

 

 

I just got this from BEST BUY and the price was same as Amazon ($60), for now. I went out looking for a USB Skype Phone and bumped into this one and bought it right away. I am very pleased with this product and my purchase and would highly recommend it and here is why.

I have both SkypeIn (allows you to have a phone no. of your choice for 30 Euros, approx US$ 38, per YEAR.) and SkypeOut (allows you to call any phone in the world much like a prepaid phone card) and I wanted to be able to use Skype away from my PC/Laptop so that I was not "tied" to one place in my apartment. So I started looking into USB Skype phones. A good one with a cord costs around $ 40 and a good cordless one costs $ 80 (I am referring to the one from Linksys and that one doesn't have the best reviews in the world so I was bit skeptical). Now for $ 60, this adapter plugs right into your USB port and allows you to use any good old phone (corded or cordless) with Skype. It doesn't need any separate power supply and is a nice little self contained unit.

Installation was a breeze and took less than 2 minutes and no computer reboot was necessary. I fired up Skype and plugged in a old corded phone and was good to go!! I made and received calls via Skype using my old phone and the voice quality was great. Next, I tried a cordless phone and it worked great too. So now I have a wireless Skype phone and I am very pleased with it. Not to mention I am putting my old discarded phones to good use now.

You can use the same phone for both Skype and your regular phone line if you want to but since I got rid of my landline phone long time back I couldn't try that feature. So I can't speak for that part. The manual does say that it's possible. Overall, I would highly recommend this if you are looking to go wireless with Skype using your good old cordless phones or just want to have the convenience of using a corded phone away from your PC. Believe me, even if you have WiFi in your place you would still want this. I have WiFi but I would rather use a cordless phone to talk on Skype out on my deck rather than lug a laptop and a headset out with me. I think most of you would agree with me on that one. Also, Skype website has similar adapters for a little less money ($ 10 less I think), so you can check those out as well if you like. I was familiar with the D-Link brand name from before compared to the brands on Skype so I went in for this one.

After months--I was overly optimistic in my initial review about this product. I played with it but it never went to a fully "operational" state on my system. Perhaps I was demanding too much, as I wanted it to run as a service, which could be done but never really worked satisfactorily. My impression is that D-link pushed out a minimal effort, to fill a product niche, that was overpriced for $60. Might be okay for $15-$20--it's really a cheap piece of hardware, but don't expect nearly anything out of this product that you'll get from a VOIP Gateway device these days for $40-$70. Unimaginative. The internals are off the shelf and the associated drivers are okay, but not great. The device works okay as advertised. I would now put 2-stars on this product (1 star at $60, 2 stars at $30, and 3 stars at $20. Maybe 4 stars at $10-$15.)
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Here's my earlier review.

The adapter hardware is good, but the driver needs work. I found the autorun installation program clunky. The developers put a visually classy but functionally clunky proprietary user interface on the autorun install program, and for some reason the "choice" buttons are DOA on my XP Professional machine. Cannot even close the autorun install program.

If you have that problem, just run the Setup.exe program directly instead of relying on the UI. Do not plug in the adapter before you run it. Skype should be running before you run setup. But not a fatal error--just rerun the Setup.exe if you're spacey like me. I really gotta read the instructions. My phone hooked up great!

Now my BIG COMPLAINT. This is a telephone adapter that should work 24-7, no matter who is logged in on my multi-user installation, right? Wrong! The driver doesn't install as a Windows service, but runs as a startup application (specified in the Windows registry) under the current user credentials, and requires an Administrator account.

There is an article in the Skype forum that describes how to install the driver as a Windows service. (And it works with similar product drivers from other manufacturers.) You need to do that to support a multiuser configuration in Windows. Otherwise, you'll lose connected calls when you log out. You'll also be unable to use the phone unless a user is logged in as an administrator. If you need to support multiuser logins, or you just want to run the adapter as a service independent of the user login credentials, then I suggest searching for "Dlink DPH-50U Adapter" in the Skype forum, and follow the instructions there to install the adapter application as a Windows service. A note of caution: The article is very detailed, but it's still an advanced user configuration, so if you're timid about opening the Windows registry, get a friend who likes messing around with Windows to help you.

POST SCRIPT to this review:
The hardware is fine. The driver is flaky. If you have installed this product and are dissatisfied with the problems described by various reviewers, uninstall the DLink driver and use the US Robotics driver (USRobotics USB Telephone Adapter (NAM)). Yes, the US Robotics driver works with this hardware device. On their product web page, click the Support link. 1) Download the appropriate (XP or Vista) US Robotics USB Telephone Adapter Utility from their Web site. 2) Unzip its files to a folder on your local drive. 3) follow their quick installation guide instructions (also available in PDF format on their Web site). When Windows gives you a choice to install automatically or to specify a location, choose to specify the location, and paste in the full path to the folder containing the unzipped US Robotics driver. Make sure that Skype is running before you install the driver and do not connect the adapter until after setup prompts you to (so Windows doesn't attempt a separate driver installation). After I switched to the US Robotics driver I stopped getting dropped calls, inability to dial, and so forth. The DLink driver can only run under an administrator user account. The US Robotics driver, I'm told, can also run under a non-administrator account. The US Robotics driver also appears to support multiple languages, although I haven't configured it for anything another than English, so I cannot confirm. US Robotics, DLink, Kinamax, AU and some similar Skype phone adapters apparently all use the same chip set, as their drivers are interchangeable. US Robotics has a pretty well written Web-based user manual that you can refer to for setup, usage, and configuration. Go to the Skype forums if you get into intractable problems.

Also, if you do install another manufacturer's driver, make sure that you use Add/Remove Programs to remove the original driver before doing an install or you may have problems with the device (or worse--I won't go into my story as most of you aren't as foolish as me, but it required opening Windows in safe mode and reverting to the last successful configuration to get back where I started). Remove the files manually if that doesn't work or if they are left in the installation folder. And if you're comfortable editing the Windows registry, you may want to search for and remove any "TLinkAgent" entries from the registry. For those of you complaining about TLinkAgent appearing on Windows task bar, that's where it's originating--clean them all out and reinstall the drivers.

Post Script to the Post Script:
The support page at Dlink now lists a Vista driver for this hardware device. However, the XP driver appears to still be the original flakey 1.0 driver.

FINAL THOUGHT:
This is an immature technology, so requires some patience and indulgence on the part of consumers. I worked with software developers on version 1 of the Windows IP telephony (at a little software company in Redmond WA), and we're a world ahead now. In just a few more years all dialing will be local. Contrary to what the Telcos might want us to believe, for some years now there has been little cost differential between calling your neighbor across the street and calling the other side of the world. Monopolies have been soaking our pocket books; extracting excessive rents from other (more efficient) areas of the economy. And that goes for all the "special" services cell phone companies now provide--incremental charges for most of those services far exceed the incremental cost of providing them. That's why I love a little gadget like this. Leaves my pocket book fatter than it might have been without the gadget.

It's junk out of the box with the drivers they ship it with because it drops calls. Every call. No kidding.

But keep reading, things improve.

The secret to getting this to work properly is to download new drivers. The secret to the new drivers is that the latest drivers for Windows XP are in the Windows Vista driver download package on their support site.

So if you have this box and you have Windows XP, download the Windows Vista driver pack instead. The installation process fails a bit as well. It is not fully automated. When Windows XP finds the new hardware you will have to point it to the new XP drivers yourself. Telling it to search for the drivers on it's own will not work.

D-Link should fix their software and have it look for and prompt users to download the latest drivers/firmware.

The latest driver also eliminates the awful noise that was previously emitted when the number was being dialed. It's now replaced with the rather pleasant, standard skype dialing sound.

With the latest driver installed the box performs like a champ. I'd have given it 5 stars if D-link had shipped it with a properly working driver in the first place/or if I had been prompted to install new drivers by the installation package, or if their website was clear about how to get new XP drivers.

Ultimately, if you want a skype solution that allows you to use a regular phone system with skype, this is the product for you. (Just download the new driver for it before installing it the first time.)

I tried for a few hours to get the D-Link software to work properly with their hardware, but could not get anything going that was stable for more than 30 minutes. The driver has many issues with Skype, including crashing, leaving stray D-Link processes in memory, locking up, losing contact with Skype, etc.

The driver will randomly crash, sometimes if you just pick up the attached phone and set it back down a few times. It doesn't take much. Also, the attached phone does not ring. I tried with two phones and even the most basic phone will not ring when a Skype call comes in.

As for the forwarding feature, it is manual. There is no quick setting or time-based setting for auto-forwarding to say, a cell phone.

Also, there are problems with D-Link's USB implementation in that it draws an illegal amount of power from the USB bus. Their little box really should have a power brick as my Adaptec USB card tells me it is drawing more than 500mA (and the Adaptec does not allow it). So I had to run it on a machine with really old USB ports that do not protect against power overdraw. Bad, bad, bad.

The entire package feels like it was rushed to market without any real testing. I would wait for a few revisions on this one. Maybe in 6-12 months it will work better. That's how it goes for a lot of D-Link products. For example, it took until the 1.6 BIOS for my D-Link gaming router to be "solid". That was about 6 months. So unless you want to be an unpaid D-Link beta tester, I would pass on this thing for now. The idea is good, the implementation is not.

D-Link DPH-50U is a great device, but unfortunately the driver that come with this hardware is unreliable and doesn't allow you to use the adapter with non-administrative account(s). Instead download and install the USRobotics driver instead from the USRobotics support website. Trust me, the USRobotics driver accually does work with the D-Link DPH-50U adapter. Ever since I started using it, Skype hasn't crashed once and I'm able to use it on non-administrative account(s). I've also heard that this driver solves many other known problems as well.

OK first off I have read practically every review on the internet about this box and all other Voip phone adapater and decided to buy this one because for $9 after rebate you really have nothing to lose. I just want to comment that did follow some instructions that I found in the posts and even spend an hour with a dlink support agent (which was totally useless) but I also had to figure a few things out on my own - which I will share in this post. I spoke with a support agent and they basically have no support material for the newest driver so don't een bother calling. I just want to say that the single most important thing you do is download the new driver from the dlink website. (go to website, on top navigation click 'support' 'downloads' 'dph-50u' and download the newest driver (says 1.1, but it's relly 1.01) OK so now on the installation instructions.

1. Download and install skype. I recommend getting one of the monthly plans and buying 12 months because you get 25% off (unlimited calling in North america for $26.55 per year! yes please!)
2. Go to dlink website and download newest drivers - see instructions above. (DO NOT YET INSTALL)
3. open dph-50u box and discard CD. make sure you locate UPC and serial sticker before you throw away box to claim the rebate)
4. Get your skype/phone adapter setup prepared. (DO NOT PLUG IN DPH-50U YET as it will mess things up)(you really want to do as much work ahead of time so you don't have to bother moving stuff around after. There will be alot of wires)
5. The dlink drivers come zipped so the best thing to do is create a new folder on your desktop and unzip the driver to that folder (very important)
6. Open folder and double click "setup" icon (DO NOT PLUG IN UNIT YET)
7. After install completes plug in dph-50u. you will see a popup that says "new usb device found" and then a driver dialogue box will pop up. Select "install from location" and click next. Now you will be able to select the folder in which you unzipped the drivers to. click next and the drivers will begin to install. Once this completes a second driver will be installed. just follow the same instructions above.
8. Once this is complete you should see a "red phone icon" in your system tray. this is fine. Open skype. Skype may say "Dlink... wants to access skpe" Allow this. The dlink icone should then turn blue.
9. Go to skype window. On top navigation select tool/option/audio options. There are 3 drop down menus for audio, microphone and ringer. Make sure all 3 are selected for the d-link (very important)

OK so now you're basically all setup to make calls. If you are interested in the more advanced features such as forwarding and toll bypass (you must have a PSTN connected aswell for these features to work) following the sets below

10. Right click the blue icon in system tray and select 'configure.' you can mess around here if you like. I won't go into much detail but basically you need to enable call forwarding and toll bypass in the pstn to voip and voip to pstn. Enter the number you want to forward to and enable "administrative mode" and select your pin.

Always remember that when you want to make a call on voip with your hand set you must dial ## 00 (country code) (telephone number) * ---the star is very easy to forget.

The best thing to do in my mind is in you phone handsets speed dial (if it has) type all of these numbers in. I have a cordless system with a couple of handsets and i have entered in all the common long distance numbers with all of the #'s 0's and *'s.

On a final note- if you want the toll bypass to work (and the manual does not support the new drivers!!!) what you do is call in on your pstn line (or voip) and once you hear "your call is being forwarded" press (*) and it will allow you to enter your pin code and make your long distance call. This in my mind is the most valuble feature this product offers. YOU CAN MAKE FREE LONG DISTANCE CALLS FROM YOUR CELL PHONE!!!

I really hope this helps because i have spent a lot of time messing around with this thing and now I have access to all of these features. If dlink you just upgrade their manual i don't think there would be so many problems.

Our family switched over to using Skype to keep in contact. Price was right, free, and voice quality was very good. Video was inconsistent.

Didn't like being tied to the PC and then saw the DPH-50U and the ability to hook it into our wireless phone system (base stations plus 4 remotes). $10 rebate made it $10 plus shipping, so took a chance even with the mixed reviews.

Worked great (downloaded the drivers per the reviews). Sound is very good. Dialing-out annoying (##001+number+*) but acceptable. Seeing the Skype name on the caller ID of the remote phones was great.

Problem. Uses up half the CPU on my admittedly aging 2.4Ghz Dell 8250. CPU shows right at 50%. Turn the driver off and the CPU settles down to about 2%. So I need half the horsepower of a reasonable PC to drive this thing? No wonder it is cheap. The PC is doing all the work.

Still not bad for the price but I can't just leave it on and forget about it. I also can't just unplug it as while that drops the CPU back to 2%, plugging it back in causes the CPU to go to 100% and has locked up the PC at least once. I have to disable to driver to use my PC for anything CPU intensive.

So it is kind of a useful toy but I'll keep looking around for something more robust and less expensive in CPU power.

Update 10/17/08. Moved the dph-50u over to my kids Dell E510, as it was slowing my PC down too much and they were away at school during the day so they wouldn't notice the slowdown. However, with the E510 (3 GHZ, Pentium 4), there was NO slowdown. The CPU idles at about 2% and after making and receiving a few calls, the CPU load is still at 2%. I checked the "readme" file to see if D-link had a recommended configuration, but there was no hint of what kind of PC it works best on (just CPU speed and memory are mentioned). So your mileage may vary as to the load on your PC. So I am optimistic and we'll see how it goes for awhile.

I bought this a few weeks ago so that I could connect a cordless phone to my office computer and use Skype for my calling. When it works, it works well, and the sound quality is fine. Unfortunately, much of the time, it doesn't work. It drops calls at random. Customer support is dismal, I emailed them several days ago and didn't even get a response acknowledging the email, let alone a solution to my problem. Just now I have tried reinstalling the drivers but that seems to be failing.

We have a VoSky Call Center at home that so far has been working much better. I bought the the DPH-50U because I was in a hurry and the store I was at only carried it, not the VoSky. I wish I had waited and bought a second VoSky.

I am using it for both Skype and landline calls with 3-handset Uniden station. Sound quality is very good, no echo. When it works it works quite well as Skype as well as landline.

Below are the issues I ran in so far:
1. Utility crashes 100% if called number gives out busy signal (US).
2. Utility randomly crashes. I am yet to have a 24 hour period without restarting unit and skype.
3. Unit seems to be unable to tolerate even smallest power surges. I had power outage, that crashed unit and required unplugging/plugging back DESPITE the fact that computer is on UPS and never even blinked.
4. Does not want to work with dual-port 2.0 USB card when external HD connected to second port, although works just fine on ancient (circa 2001) motherboard USB ports.
5. Does not work too well with latest Skype software (skype bugs maybe??). Feels more "stable" when skype downgraded to version provided on CD. Downgrade did not rectify problems 1-4 listed above.

Interesting toy, definitely not robust enough to be used as primary phone without backup landline or give to your grandma.

I dont know whats up with the negative reviews. This product is awesome. I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived about 5 days later. The packaging contained the DPH-50U, a usb cable, a manual and cd.

Installation:
Here is what you do. Open the package, and throw away the install cd that came with it. Go to "skype.com" and install their software. Then - either sign up for pay-as-u-go minutes or one of their plans. Then go to D-LINK and install their software for Vista 1.1 (it includes XP) for the DPH-50U. You install the software by downloading it, extracting it to one of your own libraries, and double clicking on setup in that library. After it is installed, reboot your machine. Then plus in the the DPH-50U. When windows says it found new hardware and needs drivers, point it to the library you just downloaded to. Thats it!

Using it:
After its installed, making calls is a breeze. Your existing phone plugs into the DPH-50U and u make calls by dialing ##-001-yourareacode-yourphonenumer-*. Calls are as clear as landlines. I dont know how they do this cos its VOIP (same as Vonage) but when I had Vonage, it sucked royally. Sounded like I was at a canyon with bad echo's and delays. Skype doesnt seem to have any of that. It works great.