Peter's Useful Crap

February 2011 update: I have switched to http://voip.ms for my phone needs and reviewed it here. As much as I wanted to continue with Dolphin Tel, I had the impression that Dolphin Tel had no desire to improve their service or product.

As part of a bundle with Lightspeed Internet in Metro Vancouver (I reviewed the Internet service in a separate post), I also got a 604 area code phone landline and number. Note that Dolphin Tel and Lightspeed Internet are the same company, but they simply use different branding for their phone and Internet offerings.

What is VoIP

For those who are unfamiliar with VoIP, it uses your Internet connection to make and receive calls. Instead of plugging your phone directly into the phone jack in the wall, you plug a normal phone into an analog telephony adapter (ATA), which then plugs into your Internet router. Once you do that, it should work right away.

Quality concerns aside, you should be aware that if your power goes out, typically your VoIP phone will not work (and if your Internet goes down, your phone definitely goes down); also, it is more difficult to set up multiple corded phones in different locations of a residence. Other than that, you use your phone as you normally would, and you do not need your computer to be on for the phone to work.

Most VoIP providers are cheaper and provide more features at a given price level than traditional phone providers such as Telus.

Cost

As the bundle was just over $50 after tax per month, you could say that the phone portion of it is between $15 and $20. Basic phone service on its own, without caller ID, voicemail, and the like, is $11 / month, while it would be $20 / month for all the “value-added” features.

I was not charged a setup fee, although I did have to purchase an ATA device. Dolphin Tel sells them for $80. You can probably get one cheaper elsewhere, but to do so you should be prepared to configure it yourself.

Features

For me on the phone + Internet bundle, features on this phone line include:

• Unlimited local calls
• Long distance calls within North America for 2.4 cents per minute. See here for all of the long distance rates.
• Voicemail
• Call waiting
• 3-way calling
• Call forwarding
• Caller ID

The one feature caveat I must mention is that my outbound caller ID always shows either only my phone number or nothing at all, despite that fact that Dolphin Tel staff have assured me that their system should show both my name and phone number. Inbound caller ID has worked fine.

On the wish list: Unlike some other VoIP providers, Dolphin Tel does not have a web portal where you can sign in and change forwarding settings or check messages. (You can, of course, do those things directly from the phone.) The web portal that it mentions on its website simply shows you some billing and account information.

It’s portable

Although my Dolphin Tel service is a landline, I can plug the ATA device into any Internet router and make and receive calls from there. So I could be in another country making and receiving calls on a normal phone as though I was in Vancouver.

For those who are familiar with software phones, I can also use login information from Dolphin Tel to make and receive calls through software such as X-Lite on my computer. This means that I can “bring the phone service” on a laptop to anywhere with an Internet connection.

Call quality

Having used a different VoIP phone provider at work (on a solid broadband Internet connection) and not been particularly happy about it, I was wary about how the quality of the calls with Dolphin Tel would be. However, after several months with Dolphin Tel, I can say that sound quality is comparable to that or a traditional landline phone, without lag, echoes, or static. I have noticed that when placing an outgoing call, it takes a couple more seconds for the ringing to start; however, this does not bother me — once connected, all is well.

Service and support

I have found Dolphin Tel / Lightspeed staff to be very friendly and helpful, and an actual, knowledgeable person always picks up support calls. They do not have 24/7 phone support, so be sure to check their business hours.

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Overall, I have been happy with the Dolphin Tel phone service. It is relatively cheap, comes with a lot of features, and is reliable. There are a couple quirks as mentioned above, but they might not bother you!

February 2011 update: I have now switched back to Telus for my Internet needs. As much as I wanted to continue with Lightspeed, I had the impression that Lightspeed had no desire to improve their customer service or product.

In searching for a residential Internet service provider in Metro Vancouver, one of my main goals was to avoid Shaw and Telus. At the very least, I could inform others as to whether there is actually a viable alternative. Plus, all of the other residents in my building use one of “the big two”, so I had a bit of a backup plan there.

As it turns out, so far so good (about a month and a half in) with Lightspeed Internet Communications. Note that I signed up for its Internet and phone bundle for just over $50 per month after tax, so I’ll review its phone service in another post. Note that Lightspeed does not provide television service (although it’s good on your wallet and time to go without cable TV anyway).

Lightspeed’s Internet service on its own as of February 2009 is $34.90 per month plus tax on a month-to-month basis. This is a couple of dollars cheaper per month if you sign up for a contract. The price includes a $4.95 system access fee since Telus unfortunately owns all the wiring. Thankfully Lightspeed is not Telus, as it has its own network and customer support. The price is comparable to Shaw or Telus’s prices after you read through the big two’s promo and contract junk. To use Lightspeed’s ADSL Internet service, you must have either an existing landline phone (a VoIP line with Shaw does not count); or pay a $10 CRTC monthly fee; or bundle it with Lightspeed’s VoIP phone service for $10 per month (which is what I did).

The speed that I get with Lightspeed is consistently over 2.5Mbps for downloads and 850kbps for uploads, no matter what time of day it is. Divide those numbers by 8 to get the more user-friendly speed in bytes instead of bits. The total monthly upload and download bandwidth limit is a combined 200gb.

Here are my general notes about Lightspeed, for which I hope to be using for many years:

• Setup is free, but you will have to get temporary access to your phone room (or equivalent box) for the owner of the wiring (typically Telus) to do a one-time test on the line.
• I have not had any connection issues except for the weekend after I first signed up, when I had to reboot the modem several times before the connection started working again many hours later. I have yet to figure out what the problem was.
• You do not get a free modem. You must either purchase one for $60 from them (plus an ATA if you are using their phone service) or you can use an existing DSL modem if you have one or can get one for cheaper elsewhere.
• Phone support during their business hours is great as I have always had a live person answer the phone immediately.
• E-mail support has been either speedy or non-responsive. I had good success following up via phone.
• If you’re in a condo that is outfitted with several Ethernet outlets, you can’t use them unless you’re with Shaw. So you’ll have to rely on your router. Remember that while ADSL doesn’t interfere with your phone service, it uses your phone lines.
• For the techies: Lightspeed doesn’t force me to use their own SMTP server for sending e-mails. You might see this is a good or bad thing. I see this as a good thing.
• The Lightspeed website could really use an update. However, the money they would spend on marketing is theoretically being used to maintain and improve their service… I hope.

Overall, Lightspeed is a good service with friendly, responsive employees who know their product. It is not blazing fast for those people who download 10 movies concurrently via torrents, but then again I’d be happy if my fellow Lightspeed customers aren’t doing that anyway. Lightspeed has provided a reliable, fast Internet connection at all hours for my personal and work needs and is an alternative to Shaw and Telus that you should consider.

If you work with different versions of files, you often need to compare them to see what has changed between files and to merge changes if necessary. This is especially important if you are working with code. Aside from creating word processor documents (and then using the “compare and merge” functionality) or using a command line diff, there are a couple of good Windows applications to make file comparisons of code more user friendly.

Beyond Compare, which is available for both Windows and Linux, costs $30 and does a really good job. (Note: you can try it out for free for 30 days.) One really good thing that it has is a Windows Explorer context menu, where you can right-click on a file, select it as the “left side” of the compare operation, then browse to another file, right-click on that one, and select it as the “right side” of the compare operation. This automatically launches the comparison window and integrates very nicely into regular file browsing processes.

On the completely free side of things, WinMerge is a program that does all of the standard operations well except for the right-click context menu behavior above (and maybe it will soon have such functionality). Instead, the only option is to launch the program for the “left side” file, and then use the browse interface from within WinMerge to select the “right side” file. For most people, this is probably something they can live with.

WinMerge has a really simple interface, similar to Beyond Compare, which does all of the major file / code comparison operations you would expect.

• There is a left pane showing coloured lines representing which areas in the files are different.
• The main pane is split into the left and right sides representing the two files, so that you can easily scroll through both files simultaneously and synchronously.
• There are buttons to copy lines from one side to the other.
• You can type directly into either side to edit the files.
• The bottom panes show close-ups of the differences.

You can also start with a blank slate (without selecting any files) and type or copy and paste arbitrary text into either side.

WinMerge has a lot of useful options, such as configurable colours and fonts, options on how to treat certain formatting of code such as blank lines, integration with TortoiseSVN, a patch file generator, and more.

Both WinMerge and Beyond Compare can also compare entire folders. The screenshot below shows WinMerge’s folder compare, which points out which files are different, as well as which files are present in only one of the two folders.

Thanks to Angelo for another great tip!

If you frequently conduct meetings or interviews over Skype, the ability to record calls can be handy. There is a paid program called Pamela that not only records but also has some extras, such as note-taking and sounds you can play during the call. However, there is a straightforward, free program for Windows appropriately called Skype Call Recorder.

Skype Call Recorder has no time limits (except for your hard drive space), and makes clear recordings in mono, stereo, or joint stereo, and in a variety of bitrates. The audio recordings are stored as mp3 files in a folder of your choice. I tested it on a meeting without a hitch. Be sure to do some test recordings to see what recording mode and bitrate provides the best trade-off of file size and audio quality for you.

The record, play, and stop buttons are prominent and the interface is easy to use. You can start and stop recording at any time.

Thanks to Angelo for the tip!

Many years ago, when a Future Shop employee tried to sell me a gold-plated USB printer cable for $20, I learned that the typical computer retailers are not where one should buy computer cables. Your closest Dollar Store / Loonie Plus / A Buck or Two often has a section of the store with fully functional computer cables for a fraction of the cost that you would pay elsewhere.

For example, I was recently looking for the following cables, and ended up paying less than $5 each at a dollar store:

• 12-foot ethernet cable: to connect a computer to the Internet on a wired router ($15 at London Drugs)
• Ethernet coupler: to connect two ethernet cables to extend their reach ($16 at Future Shop)
• PS/2 to USB adapter cable: to connect an older mouse to a newer computer ($20 at London Drugs)

Your closest dollar store might not carry every cable that a specialty electronics store has, but when it does, the equally good (and sometimes identical) cable at the dollar store is probably much cheaper. And before heading out anywhere, remember to ask friends and family if they have the spare cable that you need, since that solution might be even cheaper. (The other thing to remember is that gold-plating in your cables is usually not necessary.)