Yeah, we know life can be unfair. At home you're setup with a cordless phone and wireless laptop allowing you to roam about in full untethered data communication glory. Then you return to work only to be tethered to the cube, and more specifically, the corporate phone. Well, Plantronics may have a solution if your local IT drones are VoIP enlightened. See, Plantronics just announced their new Voyager 510-USB which they claim is the first system to bring Bluetooth connectivity to enterprise class
VoIP softphones (read: not that clunky VoIP handset on your desk). As the name indicates, the 510-USB slug-on-ear headset also features a USB little-buddy for slottin' up to your laptop. What's unique here is the PerSonoCall software which allows the kit to integrate with Avaya, Cisco, Nortel and yes, Skype among other softphone software, to offer call notification and remote call answering/ending via the headset whether you're scooting about the airport, office, or home on your lappie. The headset will switch "seamlessly" between your VoIP softphone and cellphone and should give you about 100 hours standby or 6 hours talktime within the usual 10-meter radius of your PC. Not bad, eh? Now get on the horn with IT and pester 'em for a softphone solution until those pansies cave.
posted May 17th 2006 6:00AM
This is great news!
http://www.chasetheglow.com
great. but will this work for the mac?
I WANT ONE! NO QUESTIONS ASKED!!
do regular bluetooth mobile [cell] phone headsets not work with any other bluetooth hardware?
Looks exactly like the Voyager 500, but with an added USB Bluetooth dongle.
I have the 500, and it works perfectly with my Treo and my Mac and Skype and whatnot. All you have to do is add it as a Bluetooth device, and it will show up in the Sound preferences as a possible audio device.
OS X is wonderful :-)
Wout.
Since "IT drones" and us "pansies" typically read engadget, you may not want to bite the hand that moves the mouse that clicks on your banner ads.
"IT drones", "Pansies". Who do you think reads this stuff, genius. Who ever wrote this article should be fired.
The sad thing about the Plantronics line is that they still dont support the Cisco IP Communicator. Dont be fooled by the promises of headset answering of calls for the Cisco *IP Phone*. The IP Phone is a clunky old horrible piece of software that just about works but is the VOIP equivalent of a rotary dial phone. The IP Communicator is the one that looks like a real Cisco IP phone on the desktop which everyone uses.
Given this, save your pennies and get the Sony Ericsson HBH-300 - an excellent bluetooth headset which does at least have headset answer for Skype.
As for corporate rollouts of bluetooth headsets for VOIP - dream on. We have IBM/Lenovo X and T series laptops with built in bluetooth. It requires a manual hack of the ini files of 3rd party drivers just to get the headset profile to work. All Bluetooth USB dongles I have encountered have similar nasty low level problems that have to be worked around. All this utterly defies our attempts at automation meaning rollouts cant happen. Microsoft Windows Bluetooth support needs alot of maturing.
This wasnt a rant - honest. well. maybe a little bit. Bluetooth promised me so much, but delivered so little thus far (sniff sniff).
Er, I'm also an IT drone and fancy myself a bit of pansy too. No offence meant to the brotherhood.
Thomas
Uh, pansies? Come on, grow up, guys.
Hmm
I recently purchased a combined USB/BT Motorola device, combined with their H500 earpiece/mic. After some trial and error it worked nicely with Skype. But then THE problem.... ALL my PC's audio now had to be played thru the H500 earpiece including MP3s etc (they sounded lousy, as you would exxpect). I need a BT attachment and earpiece which does not completely hi-jack my entire audio system. And Yes I did call Motorola support, they seemed quite ahppy with the audio hi-jacking! Which devices would meet my needs?
I read this stuff.
I read it and I think the it people were correctly labeled "IT drones" and "pansies.
Wake Up!
Learn something new.
If everything in cubical land was runny as it should we accountants would not be desperately searching Engadget for answers.
So shut you whining and take note:
Make getting the technology into our grey cubical lives easy rather than giving lectures on meaningless semantics.
Good Grief.
Talk about proving the authors point.
I AM NOT A PANSY!!!!
I'm NOT a pansy... I'm not, I'm not, I'm NOT.
A bit defensive of your masculinity? 4 out of 11 posts were defensive, and unless you felt you were in that demographic [pansy + IT drone = you] it wouldn't have mattered.
mra, my Plantronics Discovery 640 paired with my Powerbook right out of the box. No drivers, no fooling with different BT stacks, just worked.
I'm sure the 510 would be the same way.
I recently bought a bluetooth motolrola headset for my cell phone. Low and behold it pairs with my laptop as well. though, it is a little complicated when two devices are pairing up with one accessory
I just submitted a question to the Plantronics people, informing them (they probably are aware of this, but...) that Cisco is now supporting a MacOS X soft client for CallManager (5.x for Windows 2003 Server, 4.5 for Linux server). I asked whether they would be releasing a compatible version of 'PerSonoCall', which is the software that comes with this device (the earpiece alone is $99, but the whole package with the earpiece, PerSonoCall software, and the USB dongle is $199).
Another question is whether the earpiece and software (PerSonoCall) will work without the dongle for people who already have Bluetooth built-into their laptops. The software is a free download:
http://www.plantronics.com/north_america/en_US/support/softwaredownloads/personocall.jhtml
...so if the dongle isn't going to be necessary, you'd save $100 by buying the earpiece alone.
http://www.plantronics.com/north_america/en_US/products/cat1150057/cat1150057/prod5460010
This seems like outdated technology. We currently use Vocera for VOIP and I think you will start seeing solutions that bridge WiFi/Cell Phone devices to a PBX. This would eliminate the requirement of being within BT range of a softphone on a nearby notebook. I have a Blackberry 8700 with a Plantronics 640 BT Headset and I would much rather be able to integrate my BB device with our PBX rather than carrying a clunky laptop around.
BTW, I am not sure the author is aware of the potential problems of running Skype on enterprise corporate networks but that's another topic.
-----Original Message-----
From: Kingdom, Kelly [kelly.kingdom@plantronics.com]
To: Oblak, Daniel
Sent: Fri May 19 14:07:12 2006
Subject: Plantronics Product
Dan,
There are no plans to create a PersonoCall that will be compatible with a MAC.
Thank You
________________________________
CONTACT REQUEST
----
Topic: suggestion
Name: Dan Oblak
Message: Cisco now provides a soft phone client for MacOS X (finally!) for CallManager (5.x for Windows, or 4.5 for Linux). Is there any chance we might see a MacOS X version of PerSonoCall in the next 12 months?
For Rob
Can you please explain how you got the personocall to work on the thinkpad?
thanks