A few months back I downloaded the Gizmo client but hadn’t really used it. After my issues with Skype, several people mentioned it in the comments to that post. I downloaded the newest client, fired it back up and looked around. I hadn’t realized that it has a simple interface to record the calls from right inside the application. It also has a plugin to Adium, which means one fewer application running to get that functionality. I like that a lot.
The outbound minutes that let you call physical phones are 1 cent a minute, half of Skype, and it looks like you can forward calls to a phone without having the client running. That is another thing that bugged me about Skype, to do the call forwarding required the Windows client to be up and running on a box. That’s a big pain in the ass.
Overall, Gizmo looks better on every head to head feature, on paper at least. It loses in the critical mass race, having less than 10% of the users of Skype. Still, I’m going to give it a shot for right now, and think I’ll move it up the list to being my preferred VOIP application for doing interviews. I’ll fiddle with it, and if the call quality is equivalent or greater to Skype then the deal is done as far as I’m concerned.
Another added bonus to Gizmo over Skype is the SIP protocol. You can call SIP-enabled landline phones from Gizmo without incurring an outbound call charge. At the moment, this means you can mostly reach people on college campuses, but it’s a cool interoperability that isn’t promoted nearly enough. I tested the functionality with a friend who worked at UCLA and it was generally better than using either SkypeOut of the Gizmo equivalent.
Good luck, tho’, is all I’m going to say. Over at the Security Catalyst, we’ve made multiple efforts to use the Gizmo Project to save members, and ourselves, money, and it just doesn’t appear to have the stability of Skype, either.
One of the biggest complaints I’ve had, and heard from others, is attempting to use the dialpad to send DTMF to things like conference calls, and even though it sounds like a single keypress, the other end will report having heard the number two or three times. It makes it impossible to get into a conference bridge, and I’ve ended up back on a landline, spending real LD on multiple occasions.