Last week I posted about getting a new bluetooth speakerphone, so I thought I’d follow up with some notes about my latest headset. But first – some background! Between work, PASS, oPASS, and all else I spend a good bit of time on the phone. I use ATT mainly due to inertia, and a family plan that has mostly covered the many minutes I use. Over the last few months that has been less the case, so I’ve been trying to decide if I want to send ATT more money each month or consider alternatives. Good to explore options, right?

The phone package for the office includes unlimited long distance. Not exactly “free”, but it’s a sunk cost but I rarely use it because the phone doesn’t support bluetooth and I hate holding the phone, especially on long calls. So one option would be to replace the phone with something that does support bluetooth. Still not many of those, and most of them seem to target Skype. Brian has been using Skype as a work solution and seems happy with it, so I looked at it again (had been a couple years since I last looked) and generally the call quality is good (maybe not quite as good as Vonage, but doesn’t seem like there should be much difference?) and you can call out to “real” phones for $40 a year. I travel a good bit and the calls I need to move are the long ones, so Skype seems like an ok choice.

But…my super Dell E6500 somehow didn’t come with Bluetooth. I had already fixed that with a USB mini-mini card - $20. $40 for Skype. Connected my H500 headset (great value at $20) and Skype picked it right up, but then it didn’t want to connect back to my cell phone without repairing. So…a little research and I find the H710 headset for $35 at Amazon that is multi-point/multi-connect – supports two devices. The pairing sequence is a little strange to get the “primary” phone set, but it works and there is just a slight delay if it switches from cell to Skype or back. Sound quality seems good, battery life maybe just a bit shorter than the H500. I like that you flip the boom to turn it off, easier than the press and hold the button routine. Don’t like that it uses a micro USB charging connector, cost another .89 cents plus about $3 shipping to get an adapter for the regular USB cable I use.

As a solution it works fine, I use Skype mostly for conference calls and long calls, not making any effort to switch to it entirely. $20 for the adapter, $35 for the headset, call it $5 for the cable, and $40 for Skype = $100. Could have just bought a phone for the office! But I think this works out to fit the way I work and that’s worth something. I’ve also got a Google Voice account and starting to experiment with that, not sure how it integrates into my grand plan yet.