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Plantronics Calisto Pro Series Review

I have had a few months to use the Plantronics Calisto Pro Series wireless telephone and bluetooth headset and I remain tremendously impressed by this solution which I say is perfect for the small business who wants maximum flexibility with excellent call quality. As a side benefit you get a phone which looks pretty slick.... More like a cell phone than home phone.

In addition to the typical phone features you expect like Caller-ID, etc. it can also download Microsoft Outlook contacts and has a 300 foot range thanks to DECT 6.0 technology. In addition you can use the cordless phone, speakerphone or wireless headset with Skype or other VoIP service.

I didn't perform a battery drain test but based on my use I can't doubt the claimed talk time of eight hours. Also, it is worth pointing out a notable feature -- the "save to phonebook" option which asks you to save telephone numbers you dial and also prompts for a name, etc.

The headset incorporates bluetooth v1.2 technology and I have been able to successfully test the headset about 20 feet away from the phone -- through three walls -- with only a slight bit of static. Traditional bluetooth headsets couldn't make it through one wall in my experience.

If I had to give room for improvement I would ask for a color screen but this would likely come with lower battery life. Speaking of battery life, the phone is a bit thick -- about the size of a thick bar of soap and this is probably why the battery life is so good. I should also mention the phone is surprisingly light for its size.

With a street price between $200-$250, think this product represents great value -- VoIP calling, DECT 6.o wireless -- Outlook integration, a great design. I would certainly recommend it to any small/home business looking for a flexible and reliable solution.

One final point is this phone system could be a look at the future direction (the suspense is killing me) the company is planning to take. We may see more Plantronics products which go beyond the headset very soon.

If the Calisto Pro Series is the first step, I can't wait for the rest of them.

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Mobile Virtual Worlds Emerge

There are so many communications companies pushing products and services revolving around virtual worlds, one wonders if we are about to see a new subset of communications break out and achieve mass appeal like VoIP, the iPhone or Blackberry. Do you think we could see a time when we all have avatars -- or even multiple avatars used when communicating with different people?

Think about it... A work avatar in a suit, a casually dressed avatar for hanging out with your friends and yet another more "elegantly dressed" avatar for communicating with members of the opposite sex.

I recently wrote that Nortel, Dialogic and NMS are in this space but I forgot to mention that IBM too is deploying a virtual world communications system for US intelligence agencies. (Credit goes to Tony Rybczynski for reminding me yesterday of this).

Nortel recently espoused how we will one day use avatars on our mobile phones and it seems they were right on -- at least in theory. You see, Vollee will now provide streaming virtual world interactivity to a cell phone near you. NMS, Sonus and Dialogic too have pushed the concept but it seems their solutions are more carrier specific.

The Vollee news is truly huge as it shows that we can now take advantage of virtual worlds on the go -- regardless of carrier. At first mention, I did have concerns about the speed of mobile virtual worlds as even laptops choke when in Second Life but then again if the processing is done on a  host and just the delta of the frames is sent to the devices, the concept has "legs." In fact, this is how the Skyfire browser works -- it just sends graphics to a device and allows it to render simple bitmaps as opposed to having to deal with complex 3D graphics which would require substantial memory and processing power.

The unfortunate news is the service does not work with my HTC 6800 at the moment but it does work with the HTC Tilt 8925. Here is a video (bottom left) of the service working on a mobile phone at PC speed or better.

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Headed Back

I am headed back now -- and gearing up for my video reporting at CBX later this week. An interesting point about airlines is that their rules (on some of the older airlines anyway) are so complex that they have become like the IRS.

I had a connecting flight to Dallas and was able to go standby from NY on a direct flight. On the way back to NY this didn't work -- there was a fee that is probably double what the ticket cost.

The point is if you get an agent who doesn't know the rules you are better off. From the customer's standpoint you feel like the airline is just taking advantage of you.

It seems airlines need more transparency as I never seem to understand their complex jargon and description of rates, etc.

Sorry about the early-morning mini-rant but I haven't had coffee yet.

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