Hmmm, "soft phone" simply means a software phone. However there there are 2 components to any such service, the telephone be it hard or soft, and the connection from your local network/PC, to the telephone network.
Taking them in reverse order, Vonage looks to be a domestic service provider which bundles call costs from about £5.99 on top of line rental and broadband connection.
http://www.vonage.co.uk/index.php
which does specifically say you can make calls using a traditional phone, or on the PC.
If the vonage interface doesn't do it for you then you'll need a dediate softphone package, many of these are designed for corporate so need to sit on a server or if they're domestic then tend to be ful of instant messaging and other more social features and concentrate less on the actual phone call quality - one that looks a potential candidate and does say that it will work over wifi or 3g is:
http://www.nch.com.au/talk/
the other option of course if you want to keep it simple and use a mbile and use the PC to dial, manage contactsw etc is to use a nokia phone and the nokia pc suite software. Not show however if you can answer incoming calls in it, and you can send but can't read incoming sms messages.
many packages are either corporate systems designed to sit of servers and feature rich, or social media type application which offer lots of instant messaging and related facilities but not clear on how good they are at actually decent quality voice calls.
Adrian Higginbotham
Manager, leading edge research.
DD: 02476797333
E: [log in to unmask]
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-----Original Message-----
From: A discussion list for Assistive Technology professionals. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of will wade
Sent: 13 October 2009 11:39
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: pc & phone
The trend has definitley gone the way of the softphone as Adrian
suggests.. (Skype, Gizmo etc.. can access the full phone network -
although it does cost) - alternatively take a look at PC Dialer
http://blueshareware.com/bluetooth_pc_dialer.asp
Check also the handsets website: often they supply dialing software
(although they can be a utter shambles)) as part of a sync solution.
Note though: I don't think you can usually speak via the computer - is
the phone going to be out of the way?? I do note that you can use a
bluetooth headset with PC Dialer.. perhaps a solution in there
somewhere
w
PS: If your on a mac there are a number of nice solutions (it used to
be built into Tiger)
2009/10/13 Taylor, Barry <[log in to unmask]>:
> Dear all
> Can anyone tell me of an application that would let a pc link to mobile
> phone (by Bluetooth?) & let the user answer the phone by pc? Preferably
> dialling via pc too.
>
> I'm sure this must be out there but I can't find it!
>
> Barry
>
> Barry Taylor, Clinical Scientist
> Medical Physics Service
> Tulley Medical Physics Building, Hull Royal Infirmary
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