SIP/VOIP/PHONE 2.0 providers reviewed

After one year, this SIP revolution is being more and more reliable, so I’ve been testing for you many phone providers:

  • http://www.jajah.com
  • https://www.rebtel.com
  • http://www.justvoip.com
  • http://www.kiwak.net (for frenchs only)
  • http://www.truphone.com (UK only)

http://www.jajah.com

Call back service, provide your home/mobile number and your friend’s and will call both and connect them together.

Pro:

Client for cellphone(3G,gprs,edge (java)), or web based to establish the call (not VOIP)
Does’nt need a computer/headset

Your number is displayed when you call

Cons:

Need a phone/cellphone

Per minute call even if not terminated

https://www.rebtel.com

Translation service, give you a landline phone number (in your country) for each of your friend abroad, and you pay (if terminated) about 0.12€/min to reach a cellphone abroad and 0.00€ if he/she hang of and call back the displayed number (local landline phone number in her/him country)

Pro:

Doesnt need a computer (only to add your friend’s numbers, but can be done by sms)

Per minute call but only if not terminated

The number displayed on your friend’s phone will permanently reach you

Cons:

You still pay a fee to reach this number from your mobile (subscription)

Not easy to understand

Not your number displayed when you call

http://www.justvoip.com

Mix of Jajah and Sip provide, can either call back or use a Sip client.

Pro:

Cheap, very cheap

Your number is displayed when you call

Cons:

Need a computer or computer+phone, no cellphone client (java)

http://www.kiwak.net (for frenchs only)

Sip provider, only for frenchs, belgians and swiss.

Pro:

Free call to landline

Open protocol (SIP)

Incoming number

Cons:

Not so good quality

http://www.truphone.com (UK only)

Sip for wifi roaming, only for UK.

Pro:

Very cheap

Incoming number

Cons:

Only for nokia Nseries phone

Only for UK

To sum up, I’m using more and more Rebtel to phone abroad and Jajah for local call since Jajah ask 0.35€ for a non terminated cellphone-cellphone call ( and append quite often….)

I didn’t talk about Skype as long it’s not free to landline and use a closed protocol

If you have any information about new and more efficient provider, leave a message, Thx.

Thunderbird & Ubuntu : Dictionarie for spellcheck

The XPI package for your language doesnt work?

Here is the solution, Thuderbird use the system’s dictionarie “myspell”, so you have to copy file in /usr/share/myspell/dicts/

Or just copy and paste with the good dictionary file you can find here:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries 

wget http://ftp.services.openoffice.org/pub/OpenOffice.org/contrib/dictionaries/fr_FR.zip

sudo unzip fr_FR.zip -d /usr/share/myspell/dicts/

and just restart Thunderbird.

MVNO’s prices in EU (Cellphone call rates)

In order to compare, I will give you the prices of few europeans contry, thoses prices are based on Prepaid card only, and are the cheapest of the country.

I will not write the suscription/sim card fees since they are not consumption based.

The prices are per minute, and (per second) is written when a minute can be divised.

France

Call: 0,42 €/mn (second after the first second)

SMS: 0,10€

MMS: 0,30€

DATA(Gprs): 0,15€/10kb (yes 15€/Bb)

Minimum price per month : 3,33€

MVNO: Virgin Mobile

UK

Call: 0,22 €/mn (First 5 minutes of call) and 0,07€/min after

SMS: 0,17€

MMS: 0,35€

DATA(Gprs): 1€/Mb (limitted at 1,2 per day)

International: 0,30€/min

Minimum price per month : NA

MVNO: Virgin Mobile

ITALY

Call: 0,19 €/mn

SMS: 0,15€

MMS: 0,60€

DATA: NA

International: 0,50€/min

Minimum price per month : 15€

MVNO: Tim

SPAIN

Call: 0,14 €/mn (per sec) + 0,14€/call (establishment)

SMS: 0,12€

MMS: 0,35€

DATA(Gprs or 3G): 0,007€/Kb

International: 0,60€/min

Minimum price per month : 7€

MVNO: Yoigo

Belgium

Call: 0,20 €/mn (second after the first minute)

SMS: 0,10€

MMS: 0,39€

DATA(Gprs): NA

International: 0,65€/min

Minimum price per month : NA

MVNO: Simyo

Germany

Call: 0,15 €/mn (second after the first minute)

SMS: 0,10€

MMS: 0,39€

DATA(Gprs): 0,24€/Mb

International: 0,30€/min

Minimum price per month : NA

MVNO: Simyo

Austria

Call: 0,069 €/mn

SMS: 0,15€

MMS: 0,30€

DATA: NA

International: NA

Minimum price per month : NA

MVNO: Yesss

Finland

Call: 0,07 €/mn (second after the first second)

SMS: 0,07€

MMS: 0,35€

DATA(Gprs or 3G): 0,70€/Mb

International: 0,57€/min

Minimum price per month : 0,50€

MVNO: Kolumbus

Bluetooth Wireless PC card 3COM 3CRWB6096

After the ugly-cheap-o-dongle-microtune I bought on Ebay for 20€ inc P&P a PCMCIA 3Com bluetooth card:

bt3como.jpgbt3comc.jpg
The main advantage is the retractable antenna and the PCMCIA small size doesn’t protrude from the laptop ( very interesting, compared to the usb stick)
I assume you already install all the previous software needed in the previous topic.

You should install all this packages:

sudo apt-get install gnome-bluetooth obexserver bluez-utils bluez-passkey-gnome

And add bt-applet in start up session, to allow pairing.
Start the blutooth service.

sudo sh /etc/init.d/bluetooth start

Insert the PC card, and type:

tail /var/log/syslog

You will probably get that:

pccard: PCMCIA card inserted into slot 0
pcmcia: registering new device pcmcia0.0
bt3c_open: Firmware request failed

You need to download the 3Com firmware as detailed to the bluez website:

3com pcmcia driver

The driver for the 3Com and HP Bluetooth PCMCIA card is called bt3c_cs and to make this device working a firmware download is needed. Due the licence issue the firmware is not distributed with any of the BlueZ packages. The firmware file can be found at the Windows driver distribution or on the driver CD-ROM. The following command will extract the BT3CPCC.bin file into the right place on the local file system:

sudo sh
unzip -p btp1_1en.exe \
Drivers.W2k/BT3CPCC.bin > /lib/firmware/BT3CPCC.bin

The 3Com Bluetooth card 3.0 (3CRWB6096B) will not work with this driver. This card is a simple serial port based Bluetooth PCMCIA card and must be used together with the hci_uart driver.

And it works straight , that means, you can scann the service available.

hcitool scan
Scanning …
00:16:BC:D7:FC:18 Timothee-Nokia

sudo l2ping 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18
Ping: 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18 from 00:04:76:E1:4C:5D (data size 44) …
0 bytes from 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18 id 0 time 30.42ms
0 bytes from 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18 id 1 time 32.10ms
0 bytes from 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18 id 2 time 30.33ms
3 sent, 3 received, 0% loss

sudo sdptool browse 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18
Browsing 00:16:BC:D7:FC:18 …

Then you can install Phone Manager to send SMS from your PC.

Or also Wammu is a very good phone manager, compatible with nokia to manage sms, contact , sms, todos and also calendar.

Select in device settings, the mac address and bluephonet as connection.
Here appear a problem, the need of pairing the device, when you try either from the phone or from the computer, it fails after asked you for the PIN.

To solve it, edit the file to enable and set a new pin:

sudo gedit /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf

And in the file, be sure to have:

# Automatically initialize new devices
autoinit yes;
# Pairing mode
pairing multi;

# Default PIN code for incoming connections
passkey “1234”; # or the pin you wish

References:

http://www.bluez.org/

http://www.teaparty.net/technotes/blue-gprs.html

http://www.symbianos.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/vaio_vx71p/index.html?rev=1.5

ENE CB-712/4 card reader issue : Hibernate mode interrupted

Still running with a Toshiba Satellite M60-103 embbeding a ENE CB-712/4 card reader who doesn’t work with Ubuntu

To check the model of your reader:

lspci -v | grep ENE
06:04.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB-712/4 Cardbus Controller (rev 10)
06:04.1 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Memory Stick Card Reader Controller (rev 01)
06:04.2 Class 0805: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Secure Digital Card Reader Controller (rev 01) (prog-if 01)
06:04.3 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc: (rev 01)
06:04.4 FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0551 (rev 01)

And If you get this error while hibernating:

[17233006.828000] mmc0: Got command interrupt even though no command operation was in progress.
[17233006.828000] mmc0: Please report this to .
[17233006.828000] mmc0: Card is consuming too much power!
[17233006.828000] mmc0: Unexpected interrupt 0x00800000. Please report this to .

So needed to disable the  mmc_core: sdhci module

sudo rmmod sdhci
sudo sh -c ‘echo blacklist sdhci >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist’

Constant Hard Drive activity every 3sec / Ubuntu

I’m running with a laptop and Ubuntu 6.10, and during the night a very small access to the HD every 3-5 sec is annoying, plus can maybe shorten the hdd life time.

This is a bug is oppened:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/17878

You can check if your are involved, type:

sudo hdparm -y /dev/hda

or (for sata)

sudo hdparm -y /dev/sda

to stop then hard drive wich should spin down and up just after a while.

A temporary solution is to enable the laptop_mode, but the hdd stop after 5sec, a bit annoying.

sudo laptop_mode start

http://samwel.tk/laptop_mode/

and then edit this file:

/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf

To makes it start on boot and set the halt drive time at 10 min