The Ooma Experiment
Above, as it sits in its temporary testing location, our Ooma box all aglow in it's blue light of a good connection.
One of the nice things about our Internet connection being 'bumped up' from an often lagging less than 1 Mbps to a "whopping" almost 3 Mbps is the ability to now utilize a communication system like an "Ooma" to get our home phone in line with more modern phone features and capabilities, and to make it affordable again to have that home line.
Now, for many people 3Mbps is life in the slow lane but for our rural area we can now speed along, most of the time, in a faster lane! When Last at daughter Sandy's house her connection speed was a real solid 16 Mbps and at son Sean's his was up to 23 Mbps, but he had problems with the connection stream dropping out on occasion. But he does live in an apartment complex in Hawaii.
OK, so what is an "Ooma" you may ask? Well, I actually saw an advertisement on TV yesterday but mostly I don't recall seeing very much on TV about the device and service except around Christmas time usually, I guess a kind of gift to get when you don't know what to get?
But for me, as discussed above, I am hoping for a much better, less expensive system than what we've been paying for since 2006 when we were finally here in North Idaho full time.
Ooma is a US company that through the box shown in my photo above, you make your calls, often with much more clear audio quality, through the Internet. You can 'port' or transfer, your old "landline" number to the Ooma service from the old landline company and then cancel that landline service and gain a substantial overall cost savings.
So, I purchased a 'certified refurbished' unit from Amazon for $80, saving $40 right off the top. After a couple of weeks I opted to go for it and paid, with taxes, the $127.00 for their 'premiere' service with an annual one time payment.
Now, we've been paying almost $50.00 a month for just basic service and caller ID for the landline so from about $600.00 a year to a total of about $177.00 per year, as you still have to pay area regulatory fees which for this area is $4.24 a month, so about $50.00 a year plus the $127.00 a year is still a considerable savings from that around $600.00!
Stacy and I had long ago planned to cancel the landline entirely and have been only keeping it 'alive' for Stacy's almost 94 year old father who cannot figure out a cell phone, ANY cell phone!
I'd gotten him a "Jitterbug", which he had for over 2 years before finally telling me he couldn't recall how to use "YES" or "NO" buttons for functions on the phone!
Long story short, if Ooma works as advertised, and so far so good, a nice solution will be had by all as he won't notice any difference, he'll still just pick up the house phone next to his chair and make a call, as he only calls one person with any regularity. Nothing else for him to learn and forget, just keep using what he's used to.
And with unlimited "blacklisting" or DO NOT CALL lists, I can fill it up as a good 99% of calls to the house number are stupid sales and "Robo" calls!
The Panasonic phones we have been using at home allowed blocking up to 10 numbers which were quickly outdone and to get the phone company to stop more numbers was easy enough to do, IF you don't mind another charge added to the monthly bill for the service.
For us, we'd already been using our cell numbers for everything so we actually gain two numbers. With Ooma you get a choice of numbers for whatever area you want a number for, which I did do, and now that the landline number has been 'ported' over to Ooma, we can use the old hose number again if we want to, although for now it will be using the now second Ooma number for some simi anonymous work number to free up our cell phones from getting that personal cell number out where we don't want it. I'll let you know how it goes.
The Q500 is able to be flying again!
Finally! After many weeks of either snow, rain or winds, I was able to get some real flying in last Sunday morning. Here are a few of the photos.
Above photo is about 100 feet up looking Northwest above the cities free parking lot. The small building near the right edge of the photo is the International Visitor's Center and the public restrooms. To the left, the large building with the green front was a feed and farm store that went out of business a couple of years ago and is still vacant.
Below photo is looking North East and is of the Kootenai River Inn, a Best western Hotel with the Kootenai Tribe owned Casino the main building and grounds. The hotel facility is a full service place to stay with a very good restaurant and spa facilities. A popular destination for many Canadian and American visitors as this is a Sunday morning about 10 am. At this time of year the Kootenai River which flows right to left in this photo, is kept a little low via the Libby, Montana dam, in expectation of any runoff problems from melting snow in the next few weeks.
The last photo included is looking Southerly with the main road in the photo Highway 95 running North to Canada and South all the way to Mexico! The big US flag on the pole, when the winds are blowing, is 30 feet across and the building at that spot is the County Library. It would be a good photo, the flag all out and it is a nice thing to see but when the winds are strong enough to unfurl the flag, that would be a risky flight with a small quadcopter!
One of the nice things about our Internet connection being 'bumped up' from an often lagging less than 1 Mbps to a "whopping" almost 3 Mbps is the ability to now utilize a communication system like an "Ooma" to get our home phone in line with more modern phone features and capabilities, and to make it affordable again to have that home line.
Now, for many people 3Mbps is life in the slow lane but for our rural area we can now speed along, most of the time, in a faster lane! When Last at daughter Sandy's house her connection speed was a real solid 16 Mbps and at son Sean's his was up to 23 Mbps, but he had problems with the connection stream dropping out on occasion. But he does live in an apartment complex in Hawaii.
OK, so what is an "Ooma" you may ask? Well, I actually saw an advertisement on TV yesterday but mostly I don't recall seeing very much on TV about the device and service except around Christmas time usually, I guess a kind of gift to get when you don't know what to get?
But for me, as discussed above, I am hoping for a much better, less expensive system than what we've been paying for since 2006 when we were finally here in North Idaho full time.
Ooma is a US company that through the box shown in my photo above, you make your calls, often with much more clear audio quality, through the Internet. You can 'port' or transfer, your old "landline" number to the Ooma service from the old landline company and then cancel that landline service and gain a substantial overall cost savings.
So, I purchased a 'certified refurbished' unit from Amazon for $80, saving $40 right off the top. After a couple of weeks I opted to go for it and paid, with taxes, the $127.00 for their 'premiere' service with an annual one time payment.
Now, we've been paying almost $50.00 a month for just basic service and caller ID for the landline so from about $600.00 a year to a total of about $177.00 per year, as you still have to pay area regulatory fees which for this area is $4.24 a month, so about $50.00 a year plus the $127.00 a year is still a considerable savings from that around $600.00!
Stacy and I had long ago planned to cancel the landline entirely and have been only keeping it 'alive' for Stacy's almost 94 year old father who cannot figure out a cell phone, ANY cell phone!
I'd gotten him a "Jitterbug", which he had for over 2 years before finally telling me he couldn't recall how to use "YES" or "NO" buttons for functions on the phone!
Long story short, if Ooma works as advertised, and so far so good, a nice solution will be had by all as he won't notice any difference, he'll still just pick up the house phone next to his chair and make a call, as he only calls one person with any regularity. Nothing else for him to learn and forget, just keep using what he's used to.
And with unlimited "blacklisting" or DO NOT CALL lists, I can fill it up as a good 99% of calls to the house number are stupid sales and "Robo" calls!
The Panasonic phones we have been using at home allowed blocking up to 10 numbers which were quickly outdone and to get the phone company to stop more numbers was easy enough to do, IF you don't mind another charge added to the monthly bill for the service.
For us, we'd already been using our cell numbers for everything so we actually gain two numbers. With Ooma you get a choice of numbers for whatever area you want a number for, which I did do, and now that the landline number has been 'ported' over to Ooma, we can use the old hose number again if we want to, although for now it will be using the now second Ooma number for some simi anonymous work number to free up our cell phones from getting that personal cell number out where we don't want it. I'll let you know how it goes.
The Q500 is able to be flying again!
Finally! After many weeks of either snow, rain or winds, I was able to get some real flying in last Sunday morning. Here are a few of the photos.
Above photo is about 100 feet up looking Northwest above the cities free parking lot. The small building near the right edge of the photo is the International Visitor's Center and the public restrooms. To the left, the large building with the green front was a feed and farm store that went out of business a couple of years ago and is still vacant.
Below photo is looking North East and is of the Kootenai River Inn, a Best western Hotel with the Kootenai Tribe owned Casino the main building and grounds. The hotel facility is a full service place to stay with a very good restaurant and spa facilities. A popular destination for many Canadian and American visitors as this is a Sunday morning about 10 am. At this time of year the Kootenai River which flows right to left in this photo, is kept a little low via the Libby, Montana dam, in expectation of any runoff problems from melting snow in the next few weeks.
The last photo included is looking Southerly with the main road in the photo Highway 95 running North to Canada and South all the way to Mexico! The big US flag on the pole, when the winds are blowing, is 30 feet across and the building at that spot is the County Library. It would be a good photo, the flag all out and it is a nice thing to see but when the winds are strong enough to unfurl the flag, that would be a risky flight with a small quadcopter!
I'll be getting these photos again later in the spring season when it will be all green again.
Til next post, Tad
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