Belkin Skype Wi-Fi Phone Review : eBay Guides

Wow! What a great phone this COULD have been! It looks great! Too bad that's about all it does. Not a "plug & play" item here folks! After much tinkering and several days of trying I finally got it to work on my own since Belkin support didn't have a clue why it simply wouldn't connect to my 2wire wireless router. (Hint: If you have a 2 wire router disable your Mac filtering for a minute if it is enabled & then you can re-enable it. You may have to look in the phones system settings & get the Mac address and input it manually into the routers home page portal). Next you are going to find out Belkin has two downloads that are supposed to "fix" the phone with regards to using "Boingo". No matter how hard I tried I could not get the phone to update despite following the instructions exactly. The phone just kept freezing up in the middle of the updates no matter what order you do them in. The phone simply can't connect to ANY Boingo hot spots as promised. (Besides,we should NOT have to upgrade or download anything for a brand new anything!) In essence the phone is pretty much useless for anything but home use. Belkin truly dropped the ball when they designed this phone. The potential is huge, but because the phone has no web browser (a very stupid oversight by Belkin) you cannot connect to hardly any hot spots because virtually almost all of them require web based authentication. (I suspect this may have been done to force you to buy Boingo services but it backfired since it doesn't seem to work with Boingo either). In the end it's a great idea that was butchered by the manufacturer. I have to say regretfully, don't waste your money until they get clearance priced at around $29 because in practical terms it's pretty much the equivelent of a similar priced short range cordless home phone. Kudos to Skype for trying, shame on Belkin for dropping the ball on this product. Just a typical example of how corporate America continues to blunder along all the while patting themselves on the back and paying themselves huge bonuses thinking they are ahead of the curve when in reality they are behind the 8 ball. The phone looks great, could use some refinements for sure, but practically speaking it's a waste of your time and money. Frankly there should be a recall on this product. It's a huge disappointment!