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Use Skype and SanDisk U3 for free or cheap phone calls when you travelTake along an Ipevo handset or Plantronics folding headsetBy Lucy KomisarMillions of people know you can use Skype to make free phone calls from your computer. But what about when you’re not traveling with your computer? What do you do if you’re using a computer at a hotel or an internet café? At your home desktop or if you’re carrying a laptop, you set up the Skype program, and every time you get online, the Skype template opens with your contacts and their numbers. It lets you make SkypeOut calls to normal landline and cell phones. Without your own computer, you used to be dependent on a hotel or internet café machine having the Skype program installed. Or you downloaded and set it up. In either case, you took the chance of it popping up with your personal contacts the next time someone used the machine. Not anymore. There’s now a better way. SanDisk U3 Smart Flashdrive
I tried this at the Athenaeum Intercontinental in Athens. Phone calls at foreign hotels are routinely expensive. So I sat down at one of the Athenaeum’s free guest computers and plugged a SanDisk U3 smart flashdrive and an Ipevo Skype phone into two USB ports. The SanDisk U3 includes a specially formatted reduced size Skype program, and I had set it up at home with my password. I clicked on the U3 icon that appeared in the tray and chose Skype from the menu. Up popped the program and my contacts. Ipevo Skype phone
Plantronics DSP-400 folding stereo headset
When you tote up the savings over charges from hotels, coin boxes and cell phones, the Skype calling system practically pays for itself. I still wince at the $50 bill I got from a Brussels hotel for making 8 or 10 calls to France! The hotel had free wifi, and my laptop was connected! But I didn’t have Skype or a Skype phone or headset. I remedied that fast!
In July, when I went to a conference in Brazil, I found that computers were available at the meeting site for participants and press to check email. I could leave the laptop at the hotel and use the SanDisk U3 flashdrive. Though I generally take my computer along on trips, now when hotel wifi charges are exorbitant (try $30 a day!), I just stash the SanDisk U3 flashdrive and the Ipevo phone or Plantronics headset in my bag and pull them out when I pass an internet café. The flashdrive, of course, can also be used to store or send normal files over the internet. Being telephonically connected all over the world just got a lot cheaper and easier! For more information about these devices: Photos by Lucy Komisar. |
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The
way travelers can connect to Skype accounts without carrying a laptop is to use
a U3 flashdrive. Plug it into a USB port at a hotel or internet café computer,
and it’s as if you were at home or on your own machine.
I
dialed my calls from the Ipevo phone, which is very light and about the size of
an elongated cell phone. It has a normal phone dial pad, along with a flashing
green light to confirm that you are online. When you hit the green “Skype”
button, the computer screen shows all your contacts. And there are green and red
“phone” buttons for calling and hanging up, as in a cell phone.
Sometimes
I prefer a headset, especially when, as a journalist, I want to take notes while
talking or am just tired, after hours of calling, of holding a phone to my ear.
An excellent choice for traveling Skype users is the Plantronics DSP (digitally
enhanced) USB folding stereo headset (DSP-400). It’s adjustable for head size
and sound level, and it has a noise-cancelling microphone and a mute button. If
you receive a call while you're not wearing the headset, you’ll hear the Skype
call ring through the speaker of the computer. When using a headset, you input
phone numbers on the computer screen dial pad.
A
folding headset is just what you need for traveling. And, by the way, the
microphone works for speech recognition programs, and the stereo headset is
excellent for listening to music on your laptop or any device with a USB port.
The line is more than 9 feet, long enough so you don’t feel tethered to the
machine. Good for multi-tasking!
Months
later, in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum, I needed to call
someone whose number was a Brussels cell phone. I was staying in a small hotel
that didn’t have room phones but did have very cheap wifi. So, using SkypeOut, I
just plugged in the Ipevo and dialed from my laptop!