The Real Deal 166: Phone communications

We cover why you would or would not want to keep your landline and what the best and newest technologies are for telephony over the Internet.

Rafe on home phones:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/23/tech/real_technology/main4886901.shtml

Why have a home phone?

* Reliability of service/emergency services
* Reliabilty of voice quality
* Extensions!
* Pretty cheap, too.

New technologies for home phones…

* Skype? Oh yeah (Rafe’s Jetsons moment)
* VoIP at home – on cell phone
* Google Voice
* Verizon Hub

PHONE QUESTION

Voice mail – Chris from Pennsylvania
What do I need to boost in order to reduce VoiP artifacting? The upload or the download?

GENERAL QUESTIONS

Tom

I just listened to this weeks episode of Real Deal and heard what you had to say about your Panasonic plasma HDTV. I’ve been helping research HDTVs for my family and am curious of the model number of yours so that I can read up on it. If you could let me know that would be great! Also, any other info about it would be great. Are there any negatives you’ve experienced that were not mentioned on the show?

Thanks!
Love all the shows

– Matt

Panasonic Viera TH-50PZ800U
A: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/panasonic-viera-th-50pz800u/4505-6482_7-32886472.html

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Hey Guys,
In The Real Deal episode 164 I think it was Rafe who said that when he used to have a DSL Wi-Fi router that his ISP gave him that was both a modem and a router. I have the exact same system over here in India and although the speed isn’t great, the price is and I need to keep it cheap because I’m a student here. Now the router creates a Wi-Fi network that broadcasts my DSL connection. My question is whether i can create a local network using the same router between my computer and my Dell laptop along with the internet connection as well. My computer is connected to the router through an Ethernet cable. I want to do this because my computer has a 2TB hard disk and I have A LOT of media on it and would like to watch it on my laptop without having to use the clunky system of using an external hard drive to transfer them. I am really not good with tech so do I couldn’t figure out what to do. Do you have any ideas? Even a link to a Web site explaining what to do would be great.

Thanks guys! Love the show! Rafe isn’t that bad! And sorry for the long e-mail!

-JasonthestudenT

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I got a MBP in december, the unibody. I got the 4gb or ram and really want the 8gb. Is there anyway? If not why. If so how?

Reading pa From Joe

A: Yep, buy two 8 GB sticks

Go evaluate at a RAM seller like http://www.crucial.com/

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Hey there Tom. I just got in to medical school. I was waiting to buy a laptop. I am really interested in the new 13-in macbook pro but I am pretty sure all of the computers and software in my new medical school is window based. I was wondering what would you recommend. I know a little about bootcamp and a bit about parallels and vm fusion ware. But I do not know which one is better(more flexible). Any suggestions?

Sincerely,

Vikash S. Gupta

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