rigelk said:
I am a disabled person with reduced motor skills. I have an HP
Pavilion a610n running Windows XP home edition. I have both a modem
and ethernet connection. Frequently I participate in
teleconferences. Recently I have noticed that I am having trouble
using a hand held telephone at this point in time. Because the
teleconference require me being connected to the internet while I am
on the phone, I need to use both the telephone and the computer for
these events. My connection is through DSL so I can use the phone at
the same time.
I need to know if I can use the computer to dial and use the telephone
(using a headset or speakers) for these teleconferences. Because I
used AOL dial up before I subscribed to a DSL service, I know that
the computer can dial a regular telephone number.
So is there a way I can use the compter as a telephone for my
teleconeference? I remeber doing so in the days of DOS. Any
information would be appreciated.
Rigelk
Yes, it can be made to work. I'm in the same boat you are plus have a
memory retrieval problem so cold calls and phone conversations are
particularly hard for me to participate in and recall afterwards who
said what about which and when<g>; you get the drift. On top of that I
have a tendancy toward something like, but not literally the same, as
Tourette's Syndrom.
At any rate, in my case, my Gatway computer came with a bundled set
of telephoney software that not only allowed monitoring (at that time)
2-way audio from the analog 56k modem card and saving it to a file. It
was a realy godsend to be able to take part in phone calls with a
headset and save the conversations to disk on top of it. The recording
of the conversations, BTW, should it occur to anyone, was/is completely
legal as long as one of the parties is present in real time, meaning me
of course, and recording warnings are not necessary. It's unattended ,
covert recording ( "bugging") that's illegal.
I use a different setup nowadays since I'm on DSL and have improved
enough that I no longer have to have the equipment answer/make the calls
for me, so all I use it for now is to record my calls. I can't dial or
answer the phone with my setup.
The phone company likes to jump on TTY calls first thing, which isn't
really waht you're looking for, so it may take a bit of talking to
convince them of what you need and overcome their assumptive prejudices.
For assistance, I would suggest you contact ADA (Americans with
Disabilities Act) orgniazations in your area, the phone company itself,
and try a little research at Wikipedia.com to get some links and
syntax/lingo that will allow you to begin asking and discussing your
requirements in a meaningful way.
All you really need is a card to grab the audio from the DSL line and
sent it to your headset, and a telephony app. Mine triggers with a
keyclick now but originally it took starting and setting up an app for
each call. To get around that I use a programmabel Cheery Inc. keyboard
that lets me set up single-key macros. So now I just tap F-24 when I
want to bring the program online and I'm all set. It automatically
names the calls with a date-time stamp unless I want to put a more
meaningful text name to go with it.
Basically allyou need is the right telephony app to do things for you.
Mine started on dialup and migrated/grew from there to the DSL so my
setup wouldn't do you a lot of good, but I know there are a lot of
programs out there that will do what you need. And you don't hve to
shell out big bucks either; I've seen several of them for less than $100
and I'll bet by now there are open source initiatives for that kind of
thing that would be free and no charge.
If you get fancy with call waiting, caller ID and all the other stuff
it'll get expensive, but IMO that stuff isn't necessary. All that's
really needed is to be able to route the audio so it gets to/from a
headset or speakers/mic and can maybe monitor/save the converstation for
you too.
See what you can figure out and what suggestiosn might pop up here, and
then if you need some assistance in researching a reasonably priced app,
come back and let the group know; I still have a lot of links for
researching that sort of thing becuse I've helped two other people, one
a neighbor, the other a relative, set up their machines too. They ended
up with setups so much better than mine it bugged me but then mine does
all I need for now<g>.
HTH,
Twayne
