HelpDesk - 5th May 2006

This week a reader asks about his VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) set-up and another about sending Potos via email.

Q) I’ve recently purchased a Linksys PAP2 VOIP adapter and intend using it with my ADSL connection to get cheaper calls and so that I can have separate UK and Spanish telephone numbers for our villa rentals business. How do I choose the best provider ?

From Jenny K - Sax

A) Well Jenny, the simple answer to this question is to go to our own VOIP service Wi-Call (www.wi-call.com), but of course I would say that wouldn’t I !!!

In truth, there are a multitude of VOIP providers out there that will enable you to use your ADSL internet connection to not only make very low cost telephone calls but also to receive incoming calls on “virtual” telephone numbers for almost any location worldwide.

The trick in choosing your provider is not just down to the per minute cost of a call, but MUST also involve issues such as Quality of Service, range of options and services and, last but definitely NOT least support and contactability.

One of the major issues I have found with VOIP providers, including the “biggest” or supposed “market leaders” is the fact that they have no “human” face and are mostly impossible to contact or actually talk to when you have a problem. Believe me when I say that to set up your PAP2 properly, using the proper “Codecs” and other settings to ensure quality of call requires either detailed knowledge or help and no amount of “standard configuration” settings published on websites are going to enable you to really get the best out of you set up.

When it comes to “Virtual” telephone numbers (numbers that are re-routed to your VOIP device when dialled), you are also entering a bit of a minefield.

There are not only commercial issues, with many operators NOT licensed to give out numbers (especially in Spain !!), but also technical issue that can stop your number working. On many occasions lately I have heard of people who have, for example, obtained a “free” incoming number from a provider, only to find that it works only intermittently and that there is nobody they can actually speak to about the problems. Again, the rule of thumb here is that the cheapest is often a long way from actually being the best option, especially if you are going to use the lines for business purposes. Imagine paying to print out all of your company letterheads etc only to find out two weeks later that the number you were given is and will never work properly !!

Q) I’ve just bought our first Digital Camera (a Canon PowerShot as recommended in TechTalk by the way !!) and want to send some pictures of our kids to their Grandparents in the UK via email. As the pics seem to be of a reasonable size, what is the best way of attaching them to ensure there are no problems.

From Mark G – Finestrat

A) Well Mark, this is not an unknown issue and I have often received in the past hoards of pics from friends and relatives that take ages to download and take up a big chunk of disk space.

The first thing you should do with all of your pics is check their size in your Picture Editor and change it, if necessary, to something manageable. In most editors you can actually set the size in CM. I recommend a setting of say, 10cm wide by say 7 or 8cm high. This is a reasonable size for both viewing and printing and will meant the file size is also acceptable.
The next thing is to save them in a format that supports a reasonable level of compression such as JPEG. Again, this is pretty simple to do and an integral part of any reasonable picture editor.

Finally, try using a File Compression utility such as WinZip to combine all the photos you wish to send in a single “Compressed” file. Compressed files are files or folders that have been made smaller using compression algorithms and I won’t bother going into this techno stuff here. Suffice to say they work and make files smaller and easier to handle and email.

Windows XP has one built in and you can get instructions on how to do it from the Windows XP Help and Support function (just search for “zip”).

If you don’t have Windows XP, use the industry standard program WinZip, which is free to download from www.winzip.com.