Technology: Free Calls Get Pretty

Newsweek, February, 2006 by Brad Stone

The 75 million users of Internet telephone service Skype can finally unplug their headsets. Skype is the Luxembourg-based Voice over Internet Protocol (or VoIP) company, acquired last summer by auction giant eBay, that lets users make free phone calls to other Skype members anywhere in the world, and dirt-cheap calls to everyone else with a normal landline or mobile phone ( skype.com ). But skyping comes at another price: most calls are made by users who are leashed to their computers, on microphone-equipped headsets.

That's beginning to change. Skype has published a set of technical instructions that allow phone manufacturers to build the service into their devices--for the first time, phones that work on Skype's inexpensive online network are worth the investment. We tested the newest and coolest of the estimated 200 gadgets that are either on sale now or in development. Linksys ' new Cordless Internet Telephony ...