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Netgear SPH101 Skype Wi-Fi Phone
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   154 of 315 readers found this review helpful.

Travel with the Skype Phone

I purchased the phone to accomidate lower rates while traveling away from the USA. Most hotels now have wireless access. The phone worked well and connected everytime where the connection was open or where I only needed a SSID and WEP Id. However it does not work at airports that require a web brower type of login (as posted on MFG web site). I use the phone for dial out only. Therefore battery problems were not an issue. You can get about 1 hour of talk time. When leaveing the phone on at home it seems to last about 8 hours of standby. As reported the phone does get hot while talking but this was not an issue compared to the amount of money I saved not using the local cell carriers. Clarity and quality was just as good as my computer with the ability to walk around. Plug it in and you can talk for ever. It seem to work even with weak signals at varies times. One problem I found with the phone was connecting to a well secured router. At home I use a non-broadcast SSID with WPA- Shared Key. I also only allow certain devices to connect via the MAC filter in the router. The MAC address on the phone can be found via the menu system. I put my home router in the preffered list so it saves my connection information. It seems the phone has trouble some times with routers that dont broadcast their SSID. Connecting to the router is hit or miss. Sometimes I have to force the connection through the menu system of the phone or just turn the phone off and try again. Once conneceted though it stays connected. My router configuration is probably the execption for most users out there so they will probably not see this problem occur. However all and all the phone was well worth the money and paid for itself on my first trip out of the USA. For those road warriors who travel on their own tab I would highly recommend it.

Added:  Saturday, August 25, 2007

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