I’m increasingly noticing a problem with using PCs for teletalk, but I think it can be fixed.
Every laptop I’ve ever had, even the most boring corporate Dell, has had a microphone. Maybe not the best, but there’s a little hole somewhere with some mysterious pimples at the bottom that captures your utterances for digital transmission.
Except my current laptop. Compaq, in their infinite wisdom, sliced this feature off the list. I didn’t even think to look. OK, it was really cheap, and I’ve otherwise been happy with it. I’m sure losing a 25 cent microphone makes quite a different to a razor-thin profit margin.
So when people want to talk to me, I either need to plug in a headset or pull out by Bluetooth earpiece. I move around the house a lot with my laptop; either trying to find a quiet baby-free spot to work, or keeping things out of reach of grubby little fingers. I don’t have a static set-up where things are always plugged in.
The problem is that many conversations begin with the Skype client ringing, and me having to initiate a chat session to tell them to hold on whilst I fish out my headset and plug it in. The caller doesn’t know that I don’t have a microphone plugged in or embedded in my laptop. My laptop doesn’t know if anything is plugged into the socket. There’s no “hardware presence”.
The way round this might be for the voice application to see whether it can hear anything; if there doesn’t appear to be any ambient sound over an extended period, assume no microphone is present, or nobody is around. Either way, the user’s presence status needs updating.
Another problem is that the sound on my laptop might be turned off or set to zero. Some laptops have an analogue sound control, but mine is digital, with a mute, up and down buttons. Other people use the software volume control in their OS. Yet my “presence” (really “contactability”) doesn’t reflect any of this. A question for philosophers out there: is a softphone really ringing if the ring volume is zero?
Your PSTN desk phone normally has a ringer on/off button, and also a mute, but the PSTN isn’t capable of transmitting a message “ringer off” or “they can’t hear you” from the edge to the core. So it has the same problems. This is an opportunity for the stupid network to differentiate itself on features and usability. Why isn’t anyone seizing the chance?
PS — Switching between Bluetooth and a plug-in headset is also a usability disaster zone. Why doesn’t my Skype client or Windows do something sensible, like notice the BT headset isn’t currently connected and revert to the normal speakers and sockets? Had anyone every actually done a usability labs study on people using VoIP clients? I haven’t used iChat, but I suspect Apple are the only ones who put user experience at the forefront.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:58 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Definately a poorly thought out decision throughout HP.
I've been using softphones since they were available (remember Vocaltec's I-Phone?) and laptop's almost as long. I took for granted that each new laptop would have a microphone, until . . .the HP Pavilion dv1000 that I bought a few months ago.
They sold me on the high-def monitor and the industry lulled me into not thinking that any company would be dumb enough to put out a laptop these days without a microphone. I got home and said "not a big deal," but in the months since, have realized just how much of an annoyance it is. I curse the 25 cent part as the thing that will make me buy a new $2000 laptop 2 years earlier than I otherwise would have--damn. I am sure that you and I are not the only ones with this problem.
Skype should build functionality for something like a ring-back tone that plays a customizable message with a customizablke pop-up. You/I could say: "I may not have a microphone connected so when I answer your call, you may hear silence for a few seconds while I dig around for one to connect," the pop up could be for you/me to send a text message saying: "hold on, still looking" or "not going to find it, gonna switch to text."
It really is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Posted by: at March 16, 2005 03:15 PMThere's a microphone on these things? I really do learn something old every day.
Posted by: at March 16, 2005 05:07 PMIdem for IBM. The T-series has a microphone. I recently bought a (cheaper) R-50e, which doesn't have one!
BTW, does anybody know how to configure Skype or the PC so that the "ringing" comes through the laptop's speakers, while keeping the headset plugged in?