VoIP soft phone for use with a Mac?

I have used Skype because it works well with mixed platforms and allows video communications. I was here in Sweden and wanted to see the Gator Bowl since I am a big Nebraska fan (year and a hlf ago when they played Clemson). So I called my brother and had him turn his laptop towards the TV and watched the whole game over his webcam. OK the quality was not the best, but we could comment with each other about every play and get caught up on all kinds of things during commercials without costing me a penny.
The ability of the webcam to illustrate some details is extremely valuable! It also allows conference calls and you can get plugins to record conversations for note-taking. Then you can get a credit account to call regular phones.
On other aspect that I like is being able to call tollfree numbers in another nation and to get the samt treatment as a native as well as the call is free. And so is the program.
hope this helps,
Charles

If you are looking to not spend any money, then I would recommend Skype. Otherwise, If you would like something a little bit more reliable and of business grade, then I would look for a hosted VoIP provider who is compatible with the EyeBeam Softphone. It works great on a MAC and is very easy to configure. Most byob (bring your own bandwidth) providers like Vocalocity, Aptela, Nextiva, will have instructions on how to configure this softphone to their service. You will also be able to take advantage of their business features and things like find/me follow me, unified messaging, and much more. I believe EyeBeam still offers their X-Lite model for free, so download it and check it out. I think it also has video capabilities, but you will have to check with the providers to see if they support those functions. Personally, on my mac, I have a microphone built in, so no need for a headset. I can talk directly into my screen and I get great sound. Check it out.

http://www.counterpath.com/x-lite.html

Leah

We use Vonage for our small business. They have saved us tons of money and have been very reliable. Full explanation at http://support.vonage.com/doc/en_us/1389.xml?

Hosted telephony is by it's definition the least reliable telephone servicve available and should only be used in remote locations like a home where a dedicated private Internet connection between the phone and the premise equipment is not cost effective. In an office with more than a handfull of emloyees on location equipment will always be cheaper than every hosted telephony provider. Once you have a system installed you can host your users working remotely assumming they have a high bandwidth Internet connection, and this is the best that can be had. The idea is that you never want to put voice over the public Internet unless you absolutely have to. To use a softphone from home or a hotel or on the road from your laptop, you have to use your softphone or cell phone to be part of your corporate network. Shoretel is the only IP telephon system that has an softphone that will work with MAC. It actually reuns from Safari, firefox, or explorer, so your computer operating system has no bearing whatsover. the other beauty of a web browser based telephony access is that you can log in from every computer that has an Internet connection. When the Internet bandwidth is either slow, or otherwise providing for bad phone calls, click a button on your softphone or blakcberry or Iphone, and direct the audio to your cell phone, while still controlling all the call features with you computer based software phone. or use the iphone ap, or blackberry ap to run the software and leave the pc completely. The key as to weather this makes sense is if you already have an office with 5 or more people, and will cost justify a ShoreTel system, it will be a lot cheaper than any hosted provider, and youwill not have to relay on the public Internet to transmit audio which is the least reliable way to send audio.

Leah, byob hosted and business grade reliability is a contradiction in terms.
SInce there is no QOS available on the public Internet and every packet of VoIP needs to travel real time and QOS is the only way to assure that. there is no guarentee that any voice packet will ever get through with any degree of certainty or latency.

Dave, first, I believe we are only talking about one person who needs one softphone where he will be working remotely, not a whole office. Secondly, it sounds like to be able to use the Shore-Tel softphone, he will still be using the public internet. As you mentioned and are correct, no-one can offer QoS over the public Internet.

What you will be happy to know is that I work for PingTone Communications and the services that I offer are managed hosted VoIP with QoS, where we are able to control, manage, and monitor the networks that host our service.

Leah, then you are doing hosted the best that it can be, that means no BYOB (bring your own bandwidth). You are left with point to point (customer premise to your switch location) T-1, or MPLS carried on a provider’s private IP network correct? At that point you are eliminating the most unreliable part of hosted telephony (the Internet), which of course drives the cost up even higher, furthering the delta in total cost between CPE and hosted. And you still can not have a second route as a backup from premise to your switch. Unless you put some premise based equipment there, then it is not hosted anymore is it?

I work for a company called SetFocus and we utilize a Video Teleconferencing system called the GRID (Global Remote Instructional Delivery) where all you need is a webcam and a pair of ear buds and you can download the program for either a Mac or Windows OS. We actually offer this to companies to try out for 30 days for FREE. If interested please give me a call 973-889-0211 X-118 or email me brian.galicki@setfocus.com

Check out Silver Networks. http://www.Silvernetworks.com has a great hosted solution that is bandwidth neutral and they have a softphone clientthat works both in a native OSx environment and on a Windows partition either in Boot Camp or Parallels. If you need QoS assurance, they have a device called a Q Box that guarantees quality.

Hi Stephen,
We use very small app called *Telephone*
http://code.google.com/p/telephone/

It is nice application where you can define many SIP accounts. Works prefect !

Hello Stephen. In a Windows environment, I was introduced to softphones by someone who used X-Lite from CounterPath. There is a Mac version of X-Lite (http://www.counterpath.com/x-lite.html) but X-Lite is licensed for non-commercial use only.

So I purchased Bria (http://www.counterpath.com/bria.html). There is not only a Mac version but also a Linux (Ubuntu) version as well!

And, if you use an iPhone or an iPod Touch, CounterPath has Bria iPhone Edition (http://www.counterpath.com/bria-iphone-edition.html). I use BlackBerry and hope that CounterPath is working on a version for the BlackBerry!

Both X-Lite and Bria work very well in a hosted VOIP environment...

HTH,

John