Product Description

D-Link Skype USB Phone Adapter

Product Details

• Brand: D-Link
• Model: DPH-50U
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Original language: English, French
• Dimensions: 2.80" h x 10.50" w x 6.60" l, .75 pounds

Features

• Use your regular phone to make Skype Internet Telephone Service calls
• Receive and make both regular telephone and Skype Internet Telephone calls on the same phone
• In-call switching, conference calling, call forwarding, and toll bypassing
• Includes two RJ-11 ports and a USB port to connect your regular phone line, phone and computer
• Gives you the best of both worlds--the features of your existing phone and the low cost advantages of Skype

From the manufacturer
Make Skype Calls From a Regular Telephone

Enhance your Skype Internet Telephone Service with the DPH-50U Skype USB Phone Adapter. The Skype certified DPH-50U allows you to use your existing corded or cordless telephone to take advantage of Skype’s low cost calling features. Utilizing your existing telephone enables you to use your telephone’s built-in features such as speed dial, redial, mute and caller ID*. Using a cordless phone even unties you from your computer while making Skype calls. Best of all, there is no additional equipment to buy to start using the DPH-50U.

Receive/Make Both Regular and Skype Calls

The DPH-50U allows you to accept both regular telephone and Skype calls from the same phone giving you added flexibility. When you are talking to someone on your regular telephone line and receive an incoming Skype call, you can easily switch lines to take the Skype call or vice versa, just like a regular call-waiting feature. You can also do a conference call between regular telephone and Skype lines. For added convenience, the DPH-50U includes helpful LEDs to indicate whether you are receiving a regular telephone or Skype call.

Remote Calling Features

The DPH-50U can be configured to forward incoming Skype calls to another destination such as your cell phone so that you never miss a call while you are away. The DPH-50U also includes a toll bypass feature that is ideal for the following two scenarios:

The first scenario is when you are in the same geographical area as the DPH-50U and want to make an international call. You can call from your cell phone to the computer that the DPH-50U is connected to and make a low cost SkypeOut** international call.

The other scenario is when you are traveling abroad and want to call someone who lives in your home area. You would simply make a Skype-to-Skype call to the computer where the DPH-50U is connected to and use your regular telephone line to make a local call.

Easy to Install & Use

The DPH-50U includes two RJ-11 ports and a USB port to conveniently connect your regular phone line, telephone and computer, respectively. Since the DPH-50U receives power from the computer through the USB cable, it does not require a power adapter. The included software installs in minutes and allows you to easily and completely manage your Skype contact list and calling features. The DPH-50U is PC compatible.

The DPH-50U Skype USB Phone Adapter combines the best of both worlds by allowing you to use all the great features of your existing telephone with the low cost advantages of the Skype Internet Telephone Service.

*Your phone must be equipped with these features and/or may require additional service contract with your telephone service provider.

**Applicable to service fees from Skype.

Customer Reviews

Works great and highly recommended
I just got this from BEST BUY and the price was same as Amazon ($60), for now. I went out looking for a USB Skype Phone and bumped into this one and bought it right away. I am very pleased with this product and my purchase and would highly recommend it and here is why.

I have both SkypeIn (allows you to have a phone no. of your choice for 30 Euros, approx US$ 38, per YEAR.) and SkypeOut (allows you to call any phone in the world much like a prepaid phone card) and I wanted to be able to use Skype away from my PC/Laptop so that I was not "tied" to one place in my apartment. So I started looking into USB Skype phones. A good one with a cord costs around $ 40 and a good cordless one costs $ 80 (I am referring to the one from Linksys and that one doesn't have the best reviews in the world so I was bit skeptical). Now for $ 60, this adapter plugs right into your USB port and allows you to use any good old phone (corded or cordless) with Skype. It doesn't need any separate power supply and is a nice little self contained unit.

Installation was a breeze and took less than 2 minutes and no computer reboot was necessary. I fired up Skype and plugged in a old corded phone and was good to go!! I made and received calls via Skype using my old phone and the voice quality was great. Next, I tried a cordless phone and it worked great too. So now I have a wireless Skype phone and I am very pleased with it. Not to mention I am putting my old discarded phones to good use now.

You can use the same phone for both Skype and your regular phone line if you want to but since I got rid of my landline phone long time back I couldn't try that feature. So I can't speak for that part. The manual does say that it's possible. Overall, I would highly recommend this if you are looking to go wireless with Skype using your good old cordless phones or just want to have the convenience of using a corded phone away from your PC. Believe me, even if you have WiFi in your place you would still want this. I have WiFi but I would rather use a cordless phone to talk on Skype out on my deck rather than lug a laptop and a headset out with me. I think most of you would agree with me on that one. Also, Skype website has similar adapters for a little less money ($ 10 less I think), so you can check those out as well if you like. I was familiar with the D-Link brand name from before compared to the brands on Skype so I went in for this one.

Useful task, cheap hardware, was always overpriced for more $25
After months--I was overly optimistic in my initial review about this product. I played with it but it never went to a fully "operational" state on my system. Perhaps I was demanding too much, as I wanted it to run as a service, which could be done but never really worked satisfactorily. My impression is that D-link pushed out a minimal effort, to fill a product niche, that was overpriced for $60. Might be okay for $15-$20--it's really a cheap piece of hardware, but don't expect nearly anything out of this product that you'll get from a VOIP Gateway device these days for $40-$70. Unimaginative. The internals are off the shelf and the associated drivers are okay, but not great. The device works okay as advertised. I would now put 2-stars on this product (1 star at $60, 2 stars at $30, and 3 stars at $20. Maybe 4 stars at $10-$15.)
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Here's my earlier review.

The adapter hardware is good, but the driver needs work. I found the autorun installation program clunky. The developers put a visually classy but functionally clunky proprietary user interface on the autorun install program, and for some reason the "choice" buttons are DOA on my XP Professional machine. Cannot even close the autorun install program.

If you have that problem, just run the Setup.exe program directly instead of relying on the UI. Do not plug in the adapter before you run it. Skype should be running before you run setup. But not a fatal error--just rerun the Setup.exe if you're spacey like me. I really gotta read the instructions. My phone hooked up great!

Now my BIG COMPLAINT. This is a telephone adapter that should work 24-7, no matter who is logged in on my multi-user installation, right? Wrong! The driver doesn't install as a Windows service, but runs as a startup application (specified in the Windows registry) under the current user credentials, and requires an Administrator account.

There is an article in the Skype forum that describes how to install the driver as a Windows service. (And it works with similar product drivers from other manufacturers.) You need to do that to support a multiuser configuration in Windows. Otherwise, you'll lose connected calls when you log out. You'll also be unable to use the phone unless a user is logged in as an administrator. If you need to support multiuser logins, or you just want to run the adapter as a service independent of the user login credentials, then I suggest searching for "Dlink DPH-50U Adapter" in the Skype forum, and follow the instructions there to install the adapter application as a Windows service. A note of caution: The article is very detailed, but it's still an advanced user configuration, so if you're timid about opening the Windows registry, get a friend who likes messing around with Windows to help you.

POST SCRIPT to this review:
The hardware is fine. The driver is flaky. If you have installed this product and are dissatisfied with the problems described by various reviewers, uninstall the DLink driver and use the US Robotics driver (USRobotics USB Telephone Adapter (NAM)). Yes, the US Robotics driver works with this hardware device. On their product web page, click the Support link. 1) Download the appropriate (XP or Vista) US Robotics USB Telephone Adapter Utility from their Web site. 2) Unzip its files to a folder on your local drive. 3) follow their quick installation guide instructions (also available in PDF format on their Web site). When Windows gives you a choice to install automatically or to specify a location, choose to specify the location, and paste in the full path to the folder containing the unzipped US Robotics driver. Make sure that Skype is running before you install the driver and do not connect the adapter until after setup prompts you to (so Windows doesn't attempt a separate driver installation). After I switched to the US Robotics driver I stopped getting dropped calls, inability to dial, and so forth. The DLink driver can only run under an administrator user account. The US Robotics driver, I'm told, can also run under a non-administrator account. The US Robotics driver also appears to support multiple languages, although I haven't configured it for anything another than English, so I cannot confirm. US Robotics, DLink, Kinamax, AU and some similar Skype phone adapters apparently all use the same chip set, as their drivers are interchangeable. US Robotics has a pretty well written Web-based user manual that you can refer to for setup, usage, and configuration. Go to the Skype forums if you get into intractable problems.

Also, if you do install another manufacturer's driver, make sure that you use Add/Remove Programs to remove the original driver before doing an install or you may have problems with the device (or worse--I won't go into my story as most of you aren't as foolish as me, but it required opening Windows in safe mode and reverting to the last successful configuration to get back where I started). Remove the files manually if that doesn't work or if they are left in the installation folder. And if you're comfortable editing the Windows registry, you may want to search for and remove any "TLinkAgent" entries from the registry. For those of you complaining about TLinkAgent appearing on Windows task bar, that's where it's originating--clean them all out and reinstall the drivers.

Post Script to the Post Script:
The support page at Dlink now lists a Vista driver for this hardware device. However, the XP driver appears to still be the original flakey 1.0 driver.

FINAL THOUGHT:
This is an immature technology, so requires some patience and indulgence on the part of consumers. I worked with software developers on version 1 of the Windows IP telephony (at a little software company in Redmond WA), and we're a world ahead now. In just a few more years all dialing will be local. Contrary to what the Telcos might want us to believe, for some years now there has been little cost differential between calling your neighbor across the street and calling the other side of the world. Monopolies have been soaking our pocket books; extracting excessive rents from other (more efficient) areas of the economy. And that goes for all the "special" services cell phone companies now provide--incremental charges for most of those services far exceed the incremental cost of providing them. That's why I love a little gadget like this. Leaves my pocket book fatter than it might have been without the gadget.

Works Perfectly - Once you have the right software....
It's junk out of the box with the drivers they ship it with because it drops calls. Every call. No kidding.

But keep reading, things improve.

The secret to getting this to work properly is to download new drivers. The secret to the new drivers is that the latest drivers for Windows XP are in the Windows Vista driver download package on their support site.

So if you have this box and you have Windows XP, download the Windows Vista driver pack instead. The installation process fails a bit as well. It is not fully automated. When Windows XP finds the new hardware you will have to point it to the new XP drivers yourself. Telling it to search for the drivers on it's own will not work.

D-Link should fix their software and have it look for and prompt users to download the latest drivers/firmware.

The latest driver also eliminates the awful noise that was previously emitted when the number was being dialed. It's now replaced with the rather pleasant, standard skype dialing sound.

With the latest driver installed the box performs like a champ. I'd have given it 5 stars if D-link had shipped it with a properly working driver in the first place/or if I had been prompted to install new drivers by the installation package, or if their website was clear about how to get new XP drivers.

Ultimately, if you want a skype solution that allows you to use a regular phone system with skype, this is the product for you. (Just download the new driver for it before installing it the first time.)