Linksys.com – Products/Wireless/Basic Networking/Voice & Telephone/Telephones/CIT200
This is great, except the fact that the base station has to be plugged into a computer, and the machine has to be running the Skype software.
There is no reason not to make the phone to talk directly to my wireless network, eliminating the need of having a base station and a computer turned on just to use Skype… well, only reasons would be cost and time-to-market, it would require a more powerful processor, more memory, and an embedded version of the Skype… Though, Linux already uses embedded Linux on some of their APs, and Skype already has a version for Linux. So I’d imagine the got APIs for Linux already, not exactly plug and play for Skype and Linksys, but definitely not difficult.
The thing is, if I have my PowerBook on, I might as well use my Bluetooth headset, which costs about half the price of this Skype phone. If I have a desktop computer, then it might be more interesting…
Another obvious turn off, is that it only works with Windows XP and 2000. I think one of the reasons Skype has such a big user base is because their client runs on almost every popular OSes out there. (A Palm version would be nice btw, if any of the Skype developers found this…)
Build me a Skype phone that doesn’t require a PC and I will be very interested…
Actually, a WiFi Skype phone would go beyond household use, if it’s small and looks cool enough, I’d probably carry it with me to places with WiFi hotspots, it would be totally disruptive to the traditional wireless carriers. And with municipal WiFi networks, this might get interesting…
