Connectivity : Positive Blues

Blue 1 : I am now a registered Voice Suite user!

This means that I can make calls from my laptop to colleagues in the UK, across the globe... and even local calls in whatever country I find myself. Excellent.
This makes up for loss of Siemens Hicom telephony option, and allows me to remotely operate - taking my office with me with my laptop and internet connection.

The lack of Siemens Hicom from IBM Bordeaux was poor. The phones are there, but without being able to login I couldn't join some conference calls. I ended up using my personal mobile to receive business calls. Thankfully I am online always online, and so people didn't notice that I was not at the end of a telephone - they would contact me by instant messaging (Sametime) instead.

Blue 2 : I cannot request a headset until 2008, due to end of year financial restraints. This did not stop me investigating how to setup my personal bluetooth headset! This did not work with the latest Lenovo-supplied drivers, as Windows XP did not fancy using my Plantronics M2500 headset as a supported headset/gateway. After hunting around I found different drivers, which appear to work for this function - and for connecting to my Nokia (6310i). This is exactly what I desire, even if the Bluetooth drivers do seem to fall-over during certain configuration steps...

The Plantronics Bluetooth headset has two faults. It is not fantastically comfortable, nor does it offer crisp sound quality. Both of these would make long conference calls rather more demanding on the body&mind. It is also important to realise that when receiving a call, you already need to have headset and laptop settings configured as needed - you cannot then decide to switch it on and turn the microphone and audio listening to Bluetooth. Thus charging the unit becomes important (daily) task, together with the alteration to the tool settings to switch between default and Bluetooth device options. Naturally, the headset has its place - the car or walk-about use connected to the Nokia is a good example... but I don't see myself using this as my ideal partner for my VOIP business calls. I may therefore yet take a look at the options for a USB headset.