Customer Reviews

USB Skype Vbox - Home/Office Telephone Adapter for Skype

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have had this device for about 6 weeks now and the drivers for this device makes it border-line unusable. To use this with a computer, you must install the Yealink software (Skypemate) which runs in the background as a service. However, this software is poorly coded and also contains a memory leak. This program will crash without warning once the memory leak gets too large (this may only be an issue if you leave your computer on all the time). Also, this program often times crashed while running. (cutting off a phone conversation minutes into it)

I checked online and this is a common problem. I have tried both an older version of Skype (3) with an older driver(included on the CD) for this device and the newest version of Skype (4) with their newest driver (downloaded from their website) and still have had problems. I have tried this on two computers (one with a completely fresh installation) running Vista Pro 32-bit with all service packs.

I will be buying a different phone/adapter for use with Skype as I am tired of having the adapter drop the phone call after talking for 4 min, or not accept incoming calls at all since the program crashed. Also, enabling the CID functionality causes the device to not work at all.

The hardware itself is rock-solid and if they released a well tested, good driver, this would be a steal. Too bad Yealink has not invested money into decent software.

I bought one of these a few years ago and plugged the cordless phone system at my house (5 phones) into it. It has worked well for me with my Skype account on voice calls and I really have no serious complaints about the device. There are 2 drawbacks I should mention. First, the way this thing works you have to pick up your regular old analog phone and dial star (*) 00 and then the country code, area code and phone number you want to call (the country code for calls to the USA of course is 1). After you plug your regular phones into this device you cannot just pick up your phone and make a local call by dialing just the prefix and number like you could on regular land lines. You have to dial all outgoing calls as long distance (with country and area codes) even if you are just calling a house across the street. So there is a little extra dialing involved and you must dial *00 to make an outgoing call. That has not been a big inconvenience to me. The second drawback to this device is that it will not work unless both plugged into your computer's usb port AND your computer is left on. If you are keeping your old landline and just adding this for international calls, your old landlines will work even if your computer is turned off, but so long as your computer is off you will not be able to use this to place calls over the Internet using Skype. I am happy with it, and have had no software problems (one thing you do have to do once you install the Skypemate software is open your Skype account software on the same computer and set Skype to allow the Skypemate software to use Skype).

If you are looking for something to make Skype work as easy and reliably as a normal phone this is not quite it. The software crashes/locks up every few days but can be restarted easy enough. Dialing 00 before and then # after the number is hard to get use to but after a month I am about there. Other than that it works great!

You can use skype as if it was a regular phone line, without using the comp. Just leave the comp turned on and all you need is the phone with caller id and speed dials . The only problem is when you want to use all the features you have to use skype older version, but this is a skype problem and not this product.

Tried one of these and ultimately found it rather pointless. Though maybe I just don't find Skype to be all that useful.

After we started looking around, we found a voip service (voiSip) that could handle all of our local incoming and outbound calls, along with US, Canada, and even our occassional calls to Germany. And they could do it all using our existing phones, though we ended up buying more powerful 4-line phones because voiSip allows you to have as many lines and phones as our internet can handle at no extra charge.

I even got a 6 dollar voiSip plan for my home, bought some cheap 2-line vtech cordless phones, and I use their free video conferencing software on my notebook.

This product works great with skype, but if you try to use it with X-lite you will get line noise and the other person will have a hard time hearing you.

Worked great for a few hours and then refused to switch from Land Line to USB. Why the four stars you ask? Well it has to do with the outstanding return service I received. If it's from or thru Amazon and you have a problem you will be well taken care of...Besides, based on other reviews I suspect I just happened to get a "Hard Headed unit".

The Vondoo V3500 USB Skype Vbox is a 5 out of 5! Easy to use, works great!