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What You'll Need

To get started using an Internet phone service, all you need is a sound card with a microphone and speakers, a 56-kbps modem, an Internet connection (AOL is okay), and a browser. To increase your chances of making the service work right, though, you need to do a few things.

First, make sure your sound card is full-duplex, and upgrade if necessary. Most old sound cards are half-duplex--you'll know you have an older card if only one person can talk at a time, as with a two-way radio. If you're running at half-duplex, you might be able to fix the problem with a new driver. Check your sound card maker's Web site for an update. In my tests, I used both Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live and AWE full-duplex sound cards with no problem.

Next, you should consider buying a sturdy headset. This device will help block external noise, making it easier to hear the caller. And in most cases a headset is superior in quality to the sticklike microphone that sometimes accompanies sound cards. Even poor connections sound better over a good headset.

Finding a comfortable, technically solid headset involves trial and error. One of my favorites is Andrea's $40 NC-72 PC monaural. It's lightweight, and people said my voice sounded terrific. For comfort and quality, Telex's $90 H-551, a stereo USB headset, was another winner. Riparius's $25 telephone-like handset (sold by ZeroPlus) was hard to hold, and Labtec's $50 LVA-8550 was the worst of the bunch, with poor sound reception from the earphones and substandard audio transmission.

If you don't like headsets, try Net2Phone's $55 Yap Phone, a handheld device that looks like a phone and connects to your PC. Calling someone who owns a Yap Phone is free. If the person you're calling doesn't have one, calls cost a penny a minute in the United States and 3.9 cents or more a minute for overseas calls. But the Yap Phone performed no better than Net phones used with a headset, and working with it wasn't any easier.

Another Net2Phone product, the Yap Jack--which charges the same fees as the Yap Phone--doesn't require either party to have a PC, but the caller does need an Internet service provider. Attach a regular phone to the $160 Yap Jack, connect the Yap Jack to the wall jack, and start making calls. The Yap Jack was handy, but setup was arduous. It's also mighty expensive. Net2Phone offers a calling card, too. Its rates are about the same as those of online services, and it doesn't require you to make calls from your PC.

Net Connection Matters

If you have a dial-up connection, you must use a 56-kbps modem. Anything slower, and you'll experience dreadful voice quality--static, dropped words, and echoes. That said, even with a 56-kbps modem, I frequently had to play the CB radio game of saying "over" to signal I was finished speaking.

Dick Norton, a frequent Internet phone user in Burbank, California, uses Dialpad with his 56-kbps modem. He reports that his calls "typically last 30 to 40 minutes and are good quality on an amazingly consistent basis."

If you want your Internet phone to work like a regular phone--and you plan to use it on a regular basis--get a high-speed DSL or cable modem connection. Voice quality was substantially better (but still imperfect) in all my tests using cable or DSL.

I'm not the only one with a preference for a high-speed connection. "My uncle in Texas called me [in Canada] on his dial-up connection, and it was worse than a ham radio communication to Mars," says Shawn R. Ahmed, a student in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Yet when I used DSL to call Ahmed on Deltathree's PC-to-phone product (and again when he used his cable modem to call me), we understood each other easily.

As broadband ramps up, the technology behind Internet phone services will undoubtedly improve, but don't say adios to Ma Bell just yet. For the time being, most of us will use Internet calls only for shooting the breeze with friends and relatives. I predict, however, that in three years you'll probably make at least half your calls via Internet phones. But until Web-based telephony becomes as easy to use as regular phone service and offers the latter's crystal-clear quality, few of us will switch to it completely for our business calls.

Extra Gear

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Andrea 800/442-7787 www.andreaelectronics.com

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Labtec 360/896-2000 www.labtec.com

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Net2Phone 888/581-0842 www.yapgear.com

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Telex 877/863-4166 www.computeraudio.telex.com

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ZeroPlus 301/601-8700 www.zeroplus.com