My New Phone
So I just bought a Zyxel P2000W from my buddy Matt. It's a VOIP WIFI device, and, allegedly, I can use it to connect to open WIFI networks to be able to call anywhere in the United States or Canada.

The way I'm going to do this is to use Free World Dialup (FWD) to create an account that my phone will connect to. They then will bear the cost (or have the hookups) for giving me long distance.

The phone was $250.00 from Matt, a good price compared to the $299 - $349 range they typically seem to run in. It's slim, about the size of a long cell phone, but much slimmer. The battery should last 16 hours in sleep mode and 4 hours of active talking.

My ablity to use it around Chicago is going to be limited to the number of clueless fools that have left their linksys networks open, or those generous souls that have intentionally done the same. All I will be doing is hijacking a little bandwidth--not telco service--and you will probably never know I was there. I have wireless in the house, but it has WEP enabled, so it will be interesting to discover if the phone will allow me to use it over this network. My work has WIFI all over campus, so I'm bananas there.

The phone should arrive to me in the next week or so, and I'll let you know how it goes when I get it. Matt has them priced to sell, so if you want one, go bug him about it.
- posted by frank crist @ 12:47 PM