SmartComputing omitted a large piece of information.
The Tech News section of SmartComputing's February 2006 issue has an article titled "Sony Offers Free Online VoIP Service." That part got me all turned on. It talked all about how one can route calls to mobile phones, landlines, and "other video or audio conferencing systems." They said that Sony got with GlowPoint to help facilitate a consumer-oriented rollout of "Sony's online IVE (Instant Video Everywhere) service, providing free, unlimited VoIP service worldwide."
Well wasn't that nice of Sony to provide free unlimited calling! Then I looked. After downloading the software (< 15MB) in an attempt to sign up, I discover that it's just like Skype. Free are the computer-to-computer voice and video calls, but you have to pay to make calls to a telephone number. First the rootkit, and now this. I favor Sony's electronics, but not their software practices. They're really starting to suck.
So it's free to sign up and chat with other users via computer/webcam.
Then it's $9.99/mo for the ability to call real telephones.
And it's $19.99/mo to have some sort of videoconferencing capabilities.
Anyway, the article never mentioned anything about having to pay for any part of the service. That was their oversight. Shame on them.
No comments:
Post a Comment