Overview of Portable USB Speakerphones
For the past few years a little USB speakerphone has been a constant fixture on my desk. This fact was initially driven by my UK-based coworkers who have a habit of using Skype. Most of the Skype traffic was simply IM, but once in a while it would escalate to a voice call. In those cases I needed a suitable audio device, but it wasn’t routine enough to merit keeping a headset immediately available.
Over time I started to see increasing value in using other soft phones as well. At first it was for the convenience of being able to effectively turn any PC I happened to be working on into a phone. The scope of this sometimes goes beyond telephony. For example, I’ve used a USB audio device to record screencast training movies. Since server class motherboards often don’t have built-in audio interfaces, using a USB attached device makes it possible to record the narrative of the training on the host system along with the screencast.
So after months of badgering people about G.722 based wideband capabilities in soft phones I’ve settled on using Counterpath’s Eyebeam v1.5 as my principle soft phone. I have it installed on my laptop and netbook, both systems that travel with me all the time.
Last Christmas my wife got me one of Plantronics .Audio 480 headsets. I’d seen this model of headset offered for a while, and since I’ve used noise reducing headphones for listening to music for many years, the idea of a similar approach to a VoIP headset was intriguing. She knew that I was searching out a wideband capable SIP soft phone and thought that a suitably capable headset might enhance my traveling arsenal.
I’ve been thinking a lot about headsets and headphones lately. This comes to be for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I left my favorite headset for listening to music in a coworkers car, and I don’t think I’m getting them back. Secondly, my favorite cell phone headset is very aged, and near death. Finally, I’ve been needing to upgrade the headset hardware that I use for telephony to better address my increasing use of wideband telephony. That has both desk-bound and portable aspects to be considered.