NetComm V100 Brochure

FEATURE

PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR

PRODUCT
COMMUNICATION

My Net Fone

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It wasn't the fi rst provider of residential
VoIP services in Australia, but My Net
Fone quickly became the best.
Sold in a retail pack containing
NetComm's V100LS analog
telephone adaptor (ATA), it's
easy to set up. Plug it into your
broadband router and any
standard telephone, and you'll
quickly be saving money on your
phone calls. Its call quality was
consistently very good in our tests,
with none of the voice lag associated
with some software-based VoIP services.
Best of all, its plans offer incredible value,
with its MegaSaver plan, for example,
including untimed calls anywhere in
Australia for just 10c each and calls to the
US and UK for 2.5c per minute.
Despite some stiff opposition, My
Net Fone was the obvious choice as

'Communication Product of the Year'.

But the big kahuna — the overall PC User
'Product of the Year'? That's a big call, so
here's how we came to our verdict.
Obviously, with so many great products
to choose from, we agonised over the
decision. But even after stripping away
all the hype, VoIP (short for 'voice over
Internet Protocol') was the single most
impressive and genuinely useful new
technology to hit our homes during 2005.
Yet it quickly moved beyond being a 'new'
technology. Despite the fact that none of
the big telecommunications companies
PC COMPONENT MAKER

Nvidia

This time two years ago, things
weren't so pretty for Nvidia. It
was one of the top two makers
of graphics processing units (the
all-important component in
graphics cards for gamers), but it
was getting beaten by ATI's GPUs
in just about every price category.
However, two years is a long time
in computers, and now Nvidia
dominates. Its GeForce 7800 GTX
is the fastest GPU we've tested, its
30 JANUARY 2006 PC USER
|
OF THE YEAR 2005
PRODUCT OF THE YEAR
are offering residential VoIP , the better
home VoIP providers are already offering
remarkably mature, high-quality services.
VoIP is not without its traps. First, it's
not as reliable as the good, old PSTN
(public switched telephone network). A
power blackout or Internet outage renders
it useless. For this reason, you still need
a standard PSTN phone line as backup
(and also for ASDL broadband), which
means you still have to pay line rental.
Then you have to pay an additional
monthly fee ($9.95 in the case of My Net
Fone's MegaSaver plan) to get a PSTN
OF THE YEAR 2005
7800 GT is the best midrange
GPU and its 6600 GT is easily the
best budget chip. Nvidia also
makes excellent chipsets, the key
component in motherboards.
Take a motherboard with an
Nvidia nForce4-SLI chipset, add
one of AMD's latest Athlon 64
processors and one (or perhaps
two) 7800 GTX graphics cards,
and you'll have the fastest games
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system money can buy.
phone number so people can call you.
You need a decent broadband plan, too.
Use VoIP on a budget plan with a 200MB
download limit and penalty fees, and
you'll see your phone savings (and more)
disappear into your ISP's coffers.
So, you need to do your sums carefully
to make sure your phone savings will
outweigh the other costs involved with
VoIP . Also be aware that if you make a 000
call via a VoIP service, emergency services
can't automatically trace your address as
they can with a PSTN call.
Despite this, VoIP is an impressive new
technology that will deliver signifi cant
savings to many homes, and My Net Fone
offers the best combination of value and
quality of service.