Up to now, I have shied away from installing Internet telephones. Sure I have downloaded and installed Skype, just as a software telephone. No one can call me unless I am actually running the phone which is not often. I have just found Skype not easy to use because I have to do too much work to make a call, and I am not sure people who would call me would see that I am on and available to talk.

Over the past three weeks I have been playing around with hardware, you know, routers, a telephone and a telephone converter. With the telephone converter I have been given a local phone number. The telephone converter connects to the Internet via a router.

The trouble with my old Linksys router is that everyone 20 minutes or so, the telephone connection, via the network, was dropped by the router. To use the phone we would first have to reboot the router everytime we wanted to dial anywhere.

While it was not a big purchase, I bought a D-Link Di-524 to replace the Lynksys. What a great product to buy and install. A little booklet included in the pack labeled "Quick Installation Guide". Followed that to the letter and the product was up and running my four computer network. I installed the network phone. Five hours later the phone has not been dropped. Good steady signal.

All products need to be as easy to adopt and install as the D-Link. A Ubuntu computer, two Microsoft Windows XP, and one Windows Vista networked including a telephone connection through the network to the Motorola Cable Router, all installed with one Wizard. The D-Link Wizard was easy to use and made the network operable in two minutes after it was all plugged in.