Why do I still have to hold a phone against my ear or wear a headset to have a phone conversation?

In spite of VoIP and applications like Skype becoming so common, I’m was badly surprised not to find a hands-free setup without a headset. I’ve been looking for a hands-free solution for Skype that would allow me to have a conversation from anywhere in a room without wearing a headset. More precisely, as my wife and I are going to be separated during the week, I’m looking for a system that would allow us to have a Skype call just open during the evening and speak whenever we want. This should work in one room and preferably without using a headset, or a comfortable and wireless one.

There are wireless headsets with a long range like this Plantronics one (actually the only one I found), but $300 is too expensive for me. Bluetooth solutions are cheaper, but not that much if a USB Bluetooth dongle is also needed. There is a good choice of Bluetooth headsets, but the range is more limited and it doesn’t work flawlessly. Also, I find the headsets that hold just on one ear - like many Bluetooth ones - to be uncomfortable to wear for a longer period of time.

I was thinking that some cheap speaker and a good microphone would allow this, and that the echo problem could be easily solved by the software, but I haven’t found any information if this would work. Omni-directional microphones as used in conference rooms could be the solution (there is this Sony ECMF8), but I’m wondering about the quality.

Does anyone have any suggestion for a setup or microphone recommendation?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 20th, 2005 at 7:44 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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