I am thinking of ordering one. How do you like it?

Guess not very much since "it is turned off" lol

No Tivo here either. The wife used to work for world's largert tv listings company and Tivo was one of her accounts. She hated the rep at Tivo and back then Tivo's listings weren't exactly quality, so she won't give me Tivo.

No caller ID either. It's easier to just not answer the phone at all.

I have call waiting. It's called the busy signal. If you hear it, hang up, wait, then call later. Maybe I'll answer.

No cell phone at all. I had to have one for an old job and I usually left it turned off because it was always the office calling me with more work. I don't feel the need to be in contact with anyone while I'm grocery shopping or waiting in line for my
Big Mac.

HDTV is something I'd like to have, but I don't know when the wife will be willing to buy it for me. It's things like that, that make me wish that I was the bread winner. But she's better at it. :D

Ramster -
I've only had Vonage for a couple months now.
Really helps me to be able to stay in touch with my other 2 boys in the Twin Cities.
Since area codes don't matter - my vonage number is a local call for them.
We went from 1 or 2 twenty minute calls a week.. to 2-3 calls a day.
Brothers talking to brothers, kids calling mom, mom calling kids etc...
And now it's faster and easier to simply call Jay, and/or the rest, rather than ICQ or email.

My cell phone has been turned off for over a month.
I don't have Tivo.
I don't have caller id. There's an answering machine, leave a message, if I like you, I'll call you back.
DirectTV though.

And still LOL at UW's post :)

I have two Vonage devices. I have one at the colo because it was cheaper to pay the $14.99 than it was to pay the $50/month crossconnect and $30/month for a landline. I didn't use that one for much more than dialout notifications.

I got the second one after Frances since my DSL was working during the hurricane, but, cell & voice were dead. During Jeanne, DSL also died :)

I like it, although until this month, I haven't really been using it much. Its $.04/minute to call Australia, $.06/minute to call Poland, etc. Its still $12/minute to call InMarSat phones haha. As far as a normal landline, its not too bad. There are some nice features that I don't use (email notification of voicemails, forwarding, conference which has come in handy once) and a few other things. There are periods where it goes offline -- presumably because my DSL connection chokes it and it cannot check in.

When I am downloading things, calls get a little choppy -- I just set up QOS on my linksys router for the port that it is hooked to so that it always gets priority when it is in use. I'll have to see if it makes a difference. Except for the savings on the International calls, a cell phone is roughly the same price and much more functional. They have a 50kb/sec setting, but, some people said the quality was a bit too low. Not sure why, they listen to 12k/sec mono soundtracks on porno films... :)

They do have a plan for unlimited US/Canada calls -- and I did take my vonage device to a hotel and jacked right in with my number. You can then plug your machine in behind it so that you can surf through it transparently -- makes it nice when you forget to bring a hub or have to log into their application before the port is turned live.

Overall, I like it. I prefer a phone to a headset contraption on my sound card. The fact that I run Linux on my laptop also makes some of those services like skype a little cumbersome at best.

Their dashboard application is pretty nice -- calls show up within a minute of the end of the call so I can see just how much time I was on the phone. If you wanted a phone, and your bandwidth at home is pretty stable, you shouldn't have any problems. The only issues I had were when I was uploading/downloading something while on the phone -- normal surfing/checking email didn't seem to make a difference.

Another feature they have is the virtual numbers. You could get a number from some other city, and it would be like a local call for them. Or I could get a Canada number and you could call a local number, and my phone would ring. I forget how many numbers you can stack on there, but, you can have NYC, LA, etc and your own number and they all ring through like a normal call to you, and the caller in those cities is making a local call.

TiVo will not help tonight - it's a wonderful tool, but it's not that smart. It sees Survivor on from 8-9 & records CBS for an hour. It doesn't know that it should turn itself off when it sees a goofball Texan & back on when it sees Jeff Probst's gorgeously tanned face :D

Sparky - for a tech guy, you live in the dark :D I don't even answer the phone if I don't know the number on called ID :D

Has the board been sporadically slower over the last few days for everyone, or does it only move slower when it sees me coming?

No, you're right... it has been slower loading at random times lately. Maybe the hamsters running the server need feeding.

We know what the problem is (it's the stats on LOR) and they are working on the problem.

there are certain users that get the delay loop -- and Jim holds the keys to that little script. He mentioned something about using it like a new cell phone.

I think Skippy is on the list last I checked. :)

Mine records two channels at once. Really it is way too much for my moderate TV viewing habits.

When it plays back, how do you watch both channels? is it split screen? picture in picture?

or does it overlay the images and combine the sound. Or is one channel on the left speaker, one on the right speaker?

Seems cumbersome.

haha.

Dude you do have two eyeballs don't you?

makes sense to me.

Does the Tivo still blink 12:00 on it so that I don't feel like my VCR is missing?

That seems to be gone but for some strange reason microwave ovens and stoves have clocks that blink if the power goes off for even a microsecond so now instead of a VCR blinking I have two kitchen appliances blinking.

A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

I have black electrical tape over the VCR in the bedroom because wifey hates the blinking and I hate resetting the clock even more.

If you pay $1500 for a stove/oven and $500 for a microwave you would think that they would put a battery backup on the clocks.

It's the cd34 & cleo thread!

In response to UW's post: YES. Its been sporadic for me too.

I'm gunning for my Buddy Christ. :)

My house needs cleaning and Greenguy said he would come clean it if I hit 100k in posts.

I'd come down to see that.

Good morning fellow pimps and pimpets
I am getting caller id this weekend, that and a metal baseball bat...
I have been getting a hang up caller every friggin day and I am getting pissed off.
Spookyx says its him stalking me from afar hehe. He really should just stay on long enough to say hi :)

dareutwo and cd34. Thanks for the info!
I'm gonna order one. So I can have more than one number? Very cool. So if I deal with someone in NYC all the time I can setup a number there for us to talk and it being local? Then I can set up another number? Very cool.

I need a separate number for myself. Too much of a pain using the same number as the wife and kids. This looks like it's gonna be the thing.

Remember, your outbound calls are 'free' across the USA & Canada. If you had a NYC number, then inbound calls would not be toll calls (i.e. if the person in NYC calls you)

If you call them, it just goes against your minutes no matter what the number is that you have. For me to call NYC from my Florida number, its no different than me calling the neighbor.

Perhaps a third party counter would be a better solution. :D