@Chris sorry to hear that you’ve had bad experiences with Customer Support – drop me a line on Skype (peterparkes) and I’ll be able to take a look into any outstanding issues.

RJ11
The one I got was the Eforcity phone adapter. Really crappy software – the phone connection would stop working every few days, requiring me to unplug the adapter from the computer and plug it back in. Furthermore, whatever chipset they use to determine whether sounds are actually dialpad sounds is too sensitive – my wife and my mother-in-law’s voices are right on the border of that sound recognition, so sometimes when they would say certain things, you would end up hearing a dialpad sound instead. Extremely annoying.

Philips VOIP841
This has been pretty good. Clear connection, fewer mix ups with wife’s voice and dialpad sound. Although occasionally when my wife calls my work number, I hear a clicking sound throughout the conversation. There appears to be very little development with the software on this phone, so this issue will probably not get resolved. What’s more, the software on this phone appears to be the same software that the Linksys and Netgear phones use, so even if I switched to those phones, I’d most likely still have those problems.

Skype Customer Service
Absolutely horrible. You can only contact them via a form on their website – no customer support email address to send issues to, no number to call. What’s more, their response time is really bad, took over two weeks to respond to my question. Furthermore, if the question is something that is not answered in their FAQ, their response is to cut and paste an answer from the FAQ that closely resembles the question, but doesn’t actually answer it. If you want to respond to that answer, guess what? You need to fill out the form on the website again, as any emails to their email response will not be returned, and instead you’ll get an automated reply directing you to the webform. Considering I am paying for Skype, this is pretty bad. Just pray you never have an issue with Skype.

Now the good:
- Cheap service
- clear connection (once you set-up your router to prioritize Skype connections over all other traffic, you are good)
- Unlimited calls to US and Canada

If you can live with the minor issues I listed above, go with Skype.

As for the equipment, instead of buying expensive Skype-ready phones, I bought a UBS-RJ11 adapter. Basically, the box enables you to hook up your regular phone line into the USB port. With the $20 investment, I was able to use my regular cordless phone to make and receive calls. Between Skypein and phone number, I pay around $50 year for unlimited calling in US for home. Generally the voice quality is excellent and only time I had problems is when I am streaming videos or downloading something and talking on skype at the same time.