Jim Karpen Tips

October 2000

You remember my column about FilesAnywhere.Com--a service that offers free online storage? If so, forget it. When I recently went there to get something I had stored, they said, sorry, our free trial period is over. Trial period? Originally they were simply offering free space--no charge ever.

You remember my column about Fax4Free--a free online service for sending faxes? If so, forget it. I enjoyed it while it lasted, but recently they sent me a message saying, sorry, it now costs $4.95 a month.

You remember my column that mentioned eFax.com--a service that gives you a free fax number and the faxes come via e-mail? Well I'm not completely happy with that one either. I had a fax e-mailed to me recently, but their software, even the latest version, wouldn't open it. Of course I couldn't ask the person to fax it again since I had no way of knowing who it was from.

You remember . . . actually, that's the limit of my disappointments. The truth is, I'm still wildly enthusiastic about the free services. But I've learned a lesson: use it but don't depend on it because you don't know how long it'll be there.

Probably the best deal going right now is free long-distance calling. We talked briefly about DialPad in the past. This was to first service to let you make calls from your computer to any phone in the U.S. for free. You speak into a microphone, and your computer digitizes your voice and transmits it over the Internet to a phone anywhere in the U.S. If you want to make an international call, the person on the other side must receive your call on a computer rather than a telephone. One of my former students who lives in Brazil recently was in town for a couple months and kept in touch with his wife and lawyer almost daily via a free calling service.

These services are exploding. There's a list at http://www.drynet.com/IphonLst.htm (though I'll warn you that that page takes a long time to load). Some of the newcomers are DeltaThree.com, MyFreeLD.com, PhoneFree.com, and MediaRing.com. Typically they use Java, so you don't even have to download software. You simply go to their site, register, and start calling. A friend of mine uses it often and says that the quality varies but it's often as good as a regular telephone.

So far these services are exclusively for the PC. Macintosh users are limited to free computer-to-computer calls. Until recently there were commercial computer-to-phone software products available for the Mac, but when I went there just now to check them out . . . they had been discontinued. One more freebie gone.

© 2000 by Jim Karpen, Ph.D. (#234)