You may recall my posted "Blink, Best Damn SIP Client You Never Heard Of!" Unfortunately, at the time I wrote that, only Mac and Linux versions were available. For once, Windows got the short end of the stick! But no more! The first release for Blink on Microsoft Windows, version 0.2.0 is now available. Features include sRTP, chat, HD audio (G.722/Speex), MSRP, voicemail/answering machine, file transfer, ICE for NAT traversal, multiple SIP accounts, SIP proxy, TLS, SMS, and more. You can even sync your Google contacts with it. It also supports Bonjour auto-discovery. Bonjour Account is a special type of account that is designed to announce itself and discover other neighbors on the local area network. This account does not require a server or SIP service in order to work. So you can install Blink on multiple PCs with no SIP server and have them chat and make VoIP calls to each other. (as well as file transfer)

I tested it out on a Windows 7 PC and it was drop-dead simple to get up and running. I had it installed, registered to a SIP-based IP-PBX, and making my first VoIP call in under 2 minutes flat!

Blink has a Search bar for finding an existing contact or for entering a SIP address or telephone number. Not only can you search for a local contact in Blink's Contacts List, you can also search the synchronized Google Contacts. For some reason the one contact I added to my test Google Gmail account didn't synchronize with Blink. Blink took my username and password but no contact appeared. I then tried an incorrect Gmail password and got an error in Blink, so it's obviously communicating with the Google server.
The answering machine feature doesn't appear to work either. It never picks up even when I set it to answer after 3s. Still, it is a first release on Windows, so they're probably still working on these advanced features. The basics like calling and answering work just fine. These missing features aside, I really liked Blink.

You can record calls, but I had some difficulty finding where they were stored. The GUI doesn't tell you where they are kept and their website Windows instructions says "Recordings are stored as .wav files in ~/.blink/recordings/ folder." Uh, that path is for Mac and Linux. Doesn't exist in Windows. So I explored my profile where software often keeps settings and files and found my .wav recordings here:

C:\Users\tkeating\AppData\Roaming\Blink\recordings

Here's a screenshot of one of its options screens:


Three weeks ago, someone contacted me and said the following:

If it only would send Authorization http header. It doesn't and therefore it doesn't work with voipbuster. And with many other voip services I suppose.When I want to make a call I can see it sends an SIP INVITE without authorization header. It gets back a SIP/2.0 401 Unauthorized from the sip provider server. Only then will it send a whole series of INVITEs, this time with authorization header. But the server doesn't answer back, it seems to want to see the first request done correctly.

I haven't tested this yet, but will soon. All in all an impressive SIP client. I'd like to see the advanced feature-set more complete, but I'm still going to use it. Download it here: http://icanblink.com.