Should you get Google Voice? Reviews from beta users | Hacker News Reader

Should you get Google Voice? Reviews from beta users

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22 pointswaderoush8 comments

I've been using GV ever since its early GrandCentral days. I should highlight that the biggest hurdle was to pass the new number on to my contacts. Even then, when you call your contacts without going through GV's web-site, your contact sees your old/carrier number. The end result is a lot of confusion.

On the other hand, I am now able to simultaneously forward calls (and now sms) to my VOIP (SIP) softphone and cellphone. The current exploitative state of the US cell phone market has made me hack my way through it using GV. So yes, "power users" can indeed get a big break from GV. However, GV may be moderately infinitesimal for people who blindly pay their phone bill without cursing.

I don't really understand. Vonage has had many of these features for years. I've been a customer since 2002, and I love it. I've had the same phone numbers for 6 moves in 3 different cities. And, I was able to get an 800 number so I don't have to worry about area code changes when I move.

I can also use Vonage with a regular land line handset, which seems impossible with Google Voice.

Besides, I'm starting to get a little paranoid about how much of my personal life resides on Google servers. I'm feeling the need to diversify a bit.

My main complaint is that callers to my GV number keep getting picked up by my ATT voicemail.

I've followed all the setup directions, and things work fine 75% of the time - but that other 25% of the time I get confused messages from callers who dialed my business only to hear my personal voicemail greeting.

This problem could be on AT&Ts end, or some communication provider in the middle. I have a similar configuration set up for my work extension (not related to Grandcentral/GV). The GC/GV system basically works as a man in the middle, and it relies on ISDN or SS7 (I believe) signalling to indicate that the call wasn't completed in a message right before VM picks up. Incoming callers can hear the first second of my personal VM before my work VM takes back over.

If the connection signalling is being stripped by some intermediate link or network misconfiguration GV can probably fix it, or trouble ticket their providers to do so. When you submit your info, make sure you tell them:

1) The cell # affected, including if it's a "blue" (refers to Pre-AT&T, pre-Cingular, AT&T Wireless) number or "orange" (Cingular) number if you know.

2) The local area of that #

3) If the number was ported and from where (eg. from Sprint or T-Mobile)

4) Where you are (in course terms physically, and whatever detail you can provide network-wise) when the failures occur

5) Whether the transfer to VM occurred because your phone was busy (you were calling out at that moment), unavailable (off, underground), directed to VM (you pressed END while it was ringing), or it rang the 30 seconds away and then timed out.

This should be enough to give them a fighting chance at a test case or correlating it to another ticket (e.g. Los Angeles AT&T customers ported from Sprint) and getting it fixed.

I'm unclear on who google voice is for....is this service useful for someone with a single phone line who doesn't talk on the phone much? can I use it to circumvent cell phone charges?

The "power user" angle described in this review are worth paying attention to -- this may scare away many people who aren't that savvy at configuration and setup.

Google Voice is extremely simple to setup and use.

Even if you want to dive into the "Settings" which is probably the most "complex" part of the app, each little settings item has a tiny question-mark that you can click and a bubble explains what you're turning on/off etc. I'd say GV is easier than GMail but I'm sure the subject is probably newer to most people (phone routing vs. email)

Other than that, there's not really much to set or configure. You pick a number, choose what number you want to forward it to and you're ready to go. I sat around for an hour thinking up 7-digit vanity numbers and managed to score one, so I'm sticking with it instead of going for number portability. With that in mind, Google really needs to give us a way to dial out with our GV# as the caller ID (from our phones).

This already exists - if you call your own GV # from one of the lines registered in it and require a PIN to login, you can place calls via a touchtone interface.

I hear there's an Android app that streamlines the process.

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