I’ve been keeping a close eye on the market for a computer-less Skype phone over the past six months or so. Both Lana and my family have taken to Skype as the easiest and cheapest way to keep in touch with each other. With familial outposts in both Ireland and Spain at the moment it works out quite well. The problem I have with Skype is that you are chained to a computer when using it. There’s no computer always on in our flat, and even if there was, the currently available cordless USB handsets only tend to work with PCs.

As such, I was excited to read about the Netgear SPH101 Wireless Skype phone midway through last year. However, once it made it over to the UK it came in at an expensive £160 or so. A number of other manufacturers have come up with similar devices and a couple of weeks ago, I picked up the Belkin Wifi Phone for Skype from PC World for £99.

The phone itself is a candy-bar design, much like a normal mobile phone. However the plastics are decidedly cheap feeling and the handset is quite light. The display is colour, but low resolution. Overall it has obviously been designed to be inexpensive and predominantly house bound. The keypad contains the usual numerical keypad (for SkypeOut use) as well as a joystick and two soft keys. In use the keys are a bit of a hit-and-miss affair and it sometimes takes a couple of presses for them to produce a result. There are also volume up/down keys on the left side of the phone. To finish off a description of the externals, the handset comes with a charger which plugs into a mini-usb port on the bottom of the phone, and a small port to plug in a hands free earpiece (not supplied.) The battery is removable and charges in about three hours first time around. Battery life seems to be reasonable, with it lasting a couple of days on standby, though calls do run it down fairly quickly, with maybe 2 hours of call time from a full battery.

As the name suggests, the phone connects to your wireless network and in this respect it can handle 802.11b/g networks and has a good level of support for WEP and WPA/WPA2 PSK security. The first time you turn it on it presents you with a list of networks and once you select the one to connect to you can enter the necessary WEP key or WPA pass-phrase. Once configured you can tell the phone to auto-connect to that network. After connection you can either connect to Skype using an existing account, or create a new one. At this point it is worth introducing the Skype client which comes pre-loaded on the phone. In many ways it acts in a very similar way to the one you are probably used to using on a PC/Mac. However it is a lot more basic, even compared to the Skype for mobile client. For instance, there is no support for viewing user’s pictures, instant messaging and of course, video. What is there however is the basic functionality you’ll need for making and receiving calls, including support for SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voicemail. However if you want to top up your account credit you’ll need to log onto the Skype web site.

Once signed in you can view your contacts and make a call simply by selecting one and pressing the green call key. On the Skype-Skype calls we’ve made so far call quality has been excellent, on a par with talking on a normal land phone. SkypeOut is acceptable quality, but not as clear. We’ve experienced call drops a few times, but that could be down to problems with our wireless or even on the other end. The phone makes the usual Skype noise when your contacts come and go. One thing the client does appear to lack is support for online awareness. That is it doesn’t appear to support the option to always show your Skype status which means things like Skype Buttons may not work properly. It does of course display your online status to your contacts. The client is also upgradable via download, though none has so far been made available.

One feature which Belkin promote is the ability to take the phone out and about and connect to public access points. However the phone does not have a web browser, so any access point must be truly open and not require browser based authentication. In the UK Belkin have done a deal with popular wireless provider The Cloud via their Ultra Talk package. However, this requires subscription at a cost of £6.99 per month. I don’t envisage that our one will be leaving the confines of the flat.

One feature which would be nice would be to support multiple Skype accounts logged in simultaneously. Prior to obtaining the phone both Lana and I had separate Skype accounts, but in order for this to be our only always on Skype device we had to create a new one for both of us and distribute it to our contacts. The option to have both original accounts logged in with a different ring tone would be fantastic, but I have no idea how practical this would be.

In summary, I’ve been impressed by the handset so far in terms of its ability to perform as an always on Skype to Skype device which doesn’t require you to be tethered to a computer or even have one on. The functionality provided is pretty good and easy to use.

One thing I’d be interested to try as well would be a combined DECT landline handset and on-phone Skype unit. The RTX Dualphone 3088 which recently launched provides this capability and looks interesting.

At his MacWorld keynote, Steve Jobs announced the full details of Apple TV (formerly iTV) and the long anticipated and rumoured Apple phone: the iPhone.

Apple TV is a slim set-top box type device with wired and wireless capabilities which can connect to a TV via HDMI or Component. It has a 40GB hard disk and can sync up with your iTunes library on Mac or PC to download movies, music and photos from your iTunes. It can also stream content from up to five iTunes PCs/Macs. It will retail in the UK for £199 and is shipping in February. I think the impact of Apple TV in the UK will be muted for as long as we don’t have any TV or film content on the UK version of the iTunes store.

The iPhone however is a different story whatsoever. Whilst it is easy to dismiss Jobs’ claims that it is generations ahead of anything else out there, it does look like an amazing piece of kit. The animations available on the Apple web site promise a pretty amazing UI and interaction mechanism with fingertip control of a device which is both the first truly widescreen iPod to do video content justice, and a pretty amazing looking phone and internet device. Of course, the proof will come when it gets into the hands of reviewers and those lucky enough to pick one up in the US. In the UK we have to wait until Q4, and there are no details as yet about which networks or networks Apple will partner with. What’s more worrying as well is the lack of 3G capability meaning we will either be stuck with GPRS, or limited to networks with EDGE capability (currently only Orange in the UK and from a quick Google I don’t think they actually offer it as a service apart from select Blackberry products.) In any case, EDGE is slower than 3G and the iPhone device obviously cannot handle video calling due to the lack of a camera on the front of the device.

What’s for certain though is that Apple are going to make a very big splash in the mobile phone market with this device. Hopefully it will be a big kick up the backside to other phone manufacturers to get them to concentrate more on their interface, interaction and ease of use.

I tend to do a fair few presentations, from conferences like Salzburg last week, to customer briefings here in Hursley. I’ve always muddled through with the page down key on my laptop, but recently purchased the Logitech Cordless 2.4Ghz Presenter, as shown above.

Many times I’ve seen people present with wireless devices such as this, and more often than not they seem to cause more problems than they solve. Most of these problems are related to the range of the device governing the distance you can be from the USB receiver plugged into the laptop. I like to walk around a bit when presenting, and also like to use build-ups in my slides, so the 15m range of the Logitech device is great. In Salzburg I could comfortably change slides from anywhere in the rooms I presented in. This is particularly useful for checking your slides from the back of the room during preparation time.

As well as the basics of changing slides and a laser pointer the device also includes a programmable timer which you can set in five minute intervals (the step goes up to 10 min intervals after 60 minutes) It vibrates firstly with five minutes to go and secondly with two minutes to go. I’d like to be able to adjust the timing alerts for example to remind me at what point I plan to drop out of the slide deck into a demo, but you can always set a shorter time to trigger the alert at say 20 minutes to go then add on some extra time at that point.

Other useful functions include an “F5″ key to start/stop the presentation and a screen blanking key. It would be nice to have the ability to step out of presentation mode and then restart at a particular slide rather than just an F5 equivalent which dumps you at the beginning of the presentation. It also has a volume control for in-presentation audio,but I’ve not used this. I believe one limitation is that it only works with MS Powerpoint on Windows. In any case that is all I have tested it with.

The USB dongle slips nicely into the top of the handheld device, and it comes with a nice soft neoprene case. The device is nicely shaped to fit in the hand, and the buttons fall well beneath my fingers. It takes two LR03 batteries (supplied) and has a quoted battery life of up to six months with a battery display on the LCD.

All in all, I’m very happy with it and would recommend to others if you happen to be in the market for a new presentation device.