Posted January 18, 2007
It might be against some sort of law these days to write about any phone except Apple’s upcoming iPhone. Still, I’m going to flaunt current media convention and praise a clever phone that Steve Jobs isn’t responsible for but which is still really cool: the Vonage V-Phone. It’s a tiny device with earbud headphones that plugs into the USB drive of a broadband-connected PC and allows you to use Vonage’s broadband phone service (monthly plans start at $15 a month). So if you’ve got your laptop with you in, say, Tokyo and that laptop is connected to high-speed Internet, you can make and receive calls as if you were back at home—and therefore save a bundle on what you’d normally pay for international calls. One downside: It currently doesn’t work with Macs.
$40 at Vonage.com (plus monthly service).