I finally took delivery of my much anticipated CISCO IP phone.  Bearing in mind I am based in Scotland, this phone lives and breaths on the SpikeSource telephony network allowing me a 4 digit extension number to ping (pester?) anyone of my colleages sitting back in Redwood City.  It also gives me a direct dial US telephone number, allowing me to make (and receive) calls as if I was sitting back in Redwood City.   Since the majority of my calls are US bound, this makes a significant saving allowing me to interact with my American colleagues without asking them to wrestle with the guilt of calling international.

Before the handset left SpikeSource, it was fully configured, so all I had to do was plug the beast into my own network here, it found itself an IP address, registered itself with Qwest, and then flashed on red, ready to go.  My first out bound call to New York was clear as a bell.  Likewise my in bound call test from Dallas was equally as a clear and an absolute joy to take.  Nice touch is that it doesn't use up a network slot; it has two ports, allowing you to break any network connection by putting the phone in the middle.  No need to run a separate wire to your desktop.

I have been using Skype of late and while that has been great this CISCO phone rocks.  All I had to do was plugin a network cable, it did everything itself.  Now granted the price of the handset and the service from Qwest puts it into a different league than that of Skype, but that's bound to come down as the years roll by.