Skip to main content

ASUS Skype Video Phone Touch SV1TS

ASUS SV1TS Skype Video Phone The ASUS Skype Video Phone Touch SV1TS (Silver/Blue) is one of the newer Skype phones that brings PC-less video calls to Skype. It’s an all-in-one unit with a 7-inch 800x480 touch-screen display, built-in microphone, speaker, webcam, wifi and ethernet, and jacks for optional external headset. The phone also comes with a rechargeable battery pack.

The touch screen and menus made it a breeze to setup and start making calls in a couple of minutes. Audio quality is great but the video resolution leaves a lot to be desired. The complete package is also rather bulky, weighing in at 1.6 kg (about 3.5 lb) and at 25.3 cm (9.9 in) tall. The photographs of the phone don’t highlight this aspect but when seen in-person, the phone is definitely heavy and huge! One of the big disadvantages of this phone is the lack of portability compared to the cordless/wifi Skype handsets. Since the focus is on video calls, it can only be used a desk, making it unsuitable for causal home use as a replacement for a landline. The phone would have been a better package if it also included a cordless or wifi handset for non-video calls. After a few minutes of use, these disadvantages outweighed the cool-factor of the video and touch screen, and I had to return the phone.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

FCC Aproves Sirius-XM Merger

This has been a long time coming but finally the FCC has finally approved the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio with XM Satellite Radio . The combined entity is pretty much a monopoly in the satellite radio space but they are still competing with terrestrial radio. Either way, their stocks, NASDAQ:SIRI and NASDAQ:XMSR should get a good boost on Monday. Yahoo! Finance Quote for SIRI Quote for XMSR

Migrating from Palm Calendar to Google Calendar and iPhone

Here are the free steps to migrate from Palm's date book (or Pimlico's DateBk6 ) calendar to Google calendar for full iPhone sync. First, sync Palm with Palm Desktop . Next, open Palm Desktop, select the Calendar view, navigate to File | Export, select Export Type as Date Book Archive, Range as All and provide a file name. This will export the calendar data as Date Book Archive (.dba). There's a paid tool called DBA2CSV that converts .dba files to .csv files. However this can be done for free using Yahoo Calendar. Login into Yahoo Calendar and via Settings/Import, import the .dba file. It helps to have an empty Yahoo Calendar. Via Settings/Export, export the calendar as .csv file. Login to Google Calendar (also works with Google Apps For Your Domain GAFYD Calendar) and import the .csv file into any of the calendars. It is a good idea to create a test calendar and test the import before importing into your real calendar. That way if anything goes wrong, you can delet

Lead Tide SIM Reader

I recently came across a cheap little device for reading SIM cards . It was available from Meritline for less than USD 5 with free shipping. Curious to see what it was like, I ordered one. The device came in a small package along with a mini CD containing drivers. The packaging advertised the device as the LEAD TIDE Sim reader . Like most things these days, it's made in China. The device has a USB 1.1 interface. There was no product code or number anywhere on the packaging. Installing the drivers for the device turned out to be harder than I expected. The mini CD's autorun installed some stuff but Microsoft Windows XP couldn't install any suitable driver for the device. The mini-CD had several top level directories with what appeared to be product codes but I couldn't match any to the device itself since it had no product code. Google searches revealed that I wasn't alone in my endeavors to get the device working . Further digging revealed pointers to some thir