[Asterisk-Users] why even use SIP

[Scott Bussinger]

> Forget older years but in 2005 do hard phones really add any
> value over softphones.
>
> The call center agents already have p4 2.4ghz with 512 MB ram
> Win2K why not just get them a nice USB headset with a
> softphone IAX client,

We just tried to go entirely with softphones in our office gave up after a
month or so of trying. I tried probably 10 different softphones running on
3.0Ghz WinXP machines and none of them were workable. I tried both SIP and
IAX2 softphones using headsets plugged into the audio ports, USB headsets,
and USB phone interface boxes (www.phoneconnector.com).

While it wasn't hard to get them to work and the concept would have been
perfect in our environment, the quality was _terrible_! We had many issues
from picking up radio stations on the audio inputs, voice quality being
quite variable (sometimes almost impossible to listen to), some echo issues,
and severe delays (as much as 1/2 second at times). I tried SJPhone, Xlite,
DIAX, IAXPhone, Firefly, and a bunch more I can't think of at the moment and
all showed one problem or another. Also, very few of the clients are really
business-ready (i.e. multiple call appearances, multiple lines, hold,
transfer, DND, etc.).

We finally gave up and bought everyone Sipura SPA841 hard phones and we're
_much_ happier! I wish I hadn't had to go SIP, but none of the IAX phones
looked like good choices to me.

Be seeing you.