This photo shows just how small Maxdata's Belinea s.book 1 ultraportable is when compared with a standard-sized laptop.

However, while the s.book 1 is small, I found it perfectly capable of running standard applications under Windows XP, and its keyboard is just big enough to type on at a reasonable speed.

The 7in screen is what lets it down, though, especially as this has been squashed up to make way for a detachable Bluetooth handset, used for making VoIP calls when the laptop is connected to the internet. At a native resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, the screen feels cramped in use. The VoIP handset itself is designed to be used with Skype, which ships pre-installed with the system.

The s.book 1 is based on a 1.2GHz VIA C7M processor with 1GB memory and an 80GB hard drive. With a price tag of £419 including VAT, it is also inexpensive for such a small system, although still about twice the price of the Linux-based Asus eee PC, which is comparable in  size. A full review of the s.book 1 will appear in a future issue of IT Week.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on February 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been trying out HP's iPaq 514 Voice Messenger phone, which turns out to be a very nice lightweight handset despite having built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless interfaces.

This Windows Mobile 6 device also comes with a built-in SIP client for IP telephony, which is designed to pair up with a SIP server or IP PBX when a worker is in their office and in range of the corporate Wi-Fi network. The problem is, how to go about testing this without access to such infrastructure?

Fortunately, it turns out that there are online SIP service providers that allow you to access IP telephony over a broadband internet connection. Many of these, such as the one I chose to try out – Freespeech.co.uk – are free to sign up for, and offer free calls to other VoIP numbers.

Armed with an 0844 number and my registration details from Freespeech, I set about configuring the iPaq 514 to connect. However, it turns out that the SIP client cannot be configured from the handset itself. Users instead have to link the phone to a Windows PC and use the HP iPaq Setup Assistant that comes on a CD-ROM with the phone.

This tool turns out to be very handy and lets you configure almost all aspects of the handset, including Wi-Fi access point settings, email accounts, speed dial numbers, and even populate the browser Favourites list.

With all necessary configuration information entered, I turned on Wi-Fi and connected the phone to my wireless router at home. The VoIP client then looked for the SIP server and connected, showing the status message "freespeech.co.uk selected". The "selected" part means that any calls made will now go via the internet instead of the cellular network.

I made a quick call using the phone to a colleague that had also signed up on the same service, and found the call quality excellent, if a little on the quiet side.

Overall, I was surprised at how easy it was to get voice-over-Wi-Fi working on this handset. That said, the settings Freepeech emailed to me did not exactly match those in the iPaq 514 configuration screen, and I had to make an educated guess to bridge the gap between the two.

The only drawback to this setup is that I now have a separate phone number for calls made over VoIP that differs from my landline and the mobile number of the iPaq.

This will probably not be a problem in a business environment, as the SIP service will link to the corporate infrastructure and probably tie in with the user's desk phone. For home users, the Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) VoIP protocol, which features in RIM's new BlackBerry 8820, instead links the handset with the mobile carrier's infrastructure.

A full review of HP's iPaq 514 Voice Messenger will appear in a future issue of IT Week.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on July 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vonage's recently announced V-Phone is a USB memory stick with a difference; it has a built-in voice-over-IP (VoIP) client, and a jack socket into which you plug an accompanying headset to make voice calls.

The concept behind V-Phone is one of those ideas that seems brilliantly simple with hindsight; you should be able to make a VoIP call from just about any Internet-connected PC, if the software to do this were more widespread. But just about every PC has USB ports, so why not put the software on a USB device, and carry it around with you? This way, you don't need to install anything, and you don’t leave a data trail behind you, either.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about V-Phone is that it actually works; my previous experience of Internet phone calls led me to expect a crackly, hissing line, with frequent complete breaks in the sound.

Instead, V-Phone provides perfectly good audio quality. At times it was a little quiet, but the Vonage Talk client provides separate volume controls for both the incoming audio and the mic level, allowing you to adjust the sound to suit both you and the person at the other end of the line.

However, anyone hoping to get cheap calls wherever they go in the world should be aware of two things that can get in the way; privilege levels and firewall configurations.

I found that you need administrator rights on a system in order to run the Vonage Talk client, or even to access the V-Phone's built-in Flash storage. I don't know whether hotels and Internet cafés routinely leave their public-access PCs running with full admin privileges, but locked-down systems will prevent you from using the V-Phone.

Then there are firewalls. The Vonage Talk client needs access to a number of UDP ports to make IP calls, and these may be blocked by a firewall on both the PC and the Internet gateway of any network you are connected to.

I was unable to make a connection to the Vonage server from the network in IT Week's offices, for example. At home, I had to temporarily disable the firewall on my Windows 2000 system in order to make calls.

The V-Phone costs £19.99 in retail, with a subscription to the service costing £7.99. This lets you make unlimited calls, and Vonage also assigns your V-Phone a number so that other people can reach you whenever you have the device connected to a computer.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on October 6, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (0)