COMPRO EZfone
Reviewed by Sim Kian Ann
Date: 3rd November 1999
The COMPRO EZfone™ package feels light. The product packaging is quite nice but there is nothing really special about it. This didn't come as a surprise to me since Compro products usually do not have very attractive packaging. However, the product inside is usually well worth its cost. Anyway, I believe they ought to spend a little bit more effort on the packaging as that will definitely improve its impact on consumers like us. The manual is thin and is quite sufficient. As the card is fully Plug and Play, there is not a need to configure any other settings. Without much ado,
let's see if the COMPRO EZfone™ can prove itself as a great product!
The Installation The installation
was a breeze. Nothing could be simpler than plugging it in and installing
the necessary drivers. With just a click of the mouse button to reboot
the system the installation was done. Upon rebooting, the EZfone software
will automatically start. The COMPRO™ EZfone™ enables users to take advantage of the Internet for making international phone calls. The user can literally save a bundle since the cost of internet is a lot lower than most international phone call. If you're a frequent caller to other countries, your savings can amount to as much as 95%. Using the EZfone was very easy. In fact, it is really easy to make phone calls with the EZfone as you do not need to setup your softwares, attaching the microphone to your soundcard, adjusting your PC speakers. All you need to do is directly dial with your regular or cordless phone. It is as simple as that, all without the need to touch the PC. I suppose this is great for those without any PC knowledge (my mom will love this!). In addition, it is much more natural to use a regular telephone to make Internet calls. I think talking to someone else using a headphone and a PC microphone is quite silly looking. It looked as though the user is a phone operator. The process of establishing a line with the other party is fully automated. If the receiving party has an EZfone™ installed, all you need to do is dial and talk to the receiving party first in order to setup the internet phone connection. After that, you just have to press the # key on your phone and both the PCs will automatically dial into their respective Internet Service Provider (ISP) in order to establish an internet connection. Once the connection is successful, both parties will be alerted to pick up the phone for a chat without the need to worry about the impending phone bills. If both parties are always online, all you have to do is dial the receiving party's phone number and followed by the # key to establish the internet phone call, almost immediately. If only one party have EZfone™ installed, there's still a way out. There are gateways which you can call to connect you directly to the other person's phone line. Check out their support site at http://www.ezfone.com/ for full details on using these gateways. If you are using the gateways, be prepared to pay a small fee for connection usage. Here are the minimum system requirements for using the EZfone :-
Generally, there are not many bad points about this internet phone kit. In fact there are only two that I can think of right now. The voice quality is generally good but it is still dependent on the performance of the network. For example, the earthquake in Taiwan disrupted the internet service between Singapore and Taiwan, thus, if too much depency for critical business lie on this product, it will not be too good. This means that the voice quality can deteriorate if you have a slow internet connection. The next thing is that this card is based on the ISA slot which may be phasing out soon with the PC99 specifications coming into place. Hopefully, COMPRO™ will replace with a PCI bus card soon. Moreover, their
support website http://www.ezfone.com
is really slow. I hope Compro would do something to improve the web
access speed since most users would need some form of help in setting
up the card and gathering info about using the card with different gateways.
This is definitely an innovative product and is a good and commendable effort by Compro to break into the telephony industry. However, I think it still have the latent trait of internet telephony which is the dependency of the network quality and performance. I think it is also very crucial that COMPRO™ change this product to a PCI bus based product. But again I think that COMPRO™ could further improve it by including remote access capability, and maybe manufacture a PCMCIA or a compact Flash equivalent to ride on the wave of mobile computing. With internet video conferencing becoming more popular these days, COMPRO™ could attract more attention by packaging an additional Digital Video Camera to produce a total internet video conferencing solution.
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