After my previous failure to get WengoPhone to cooperate, I had the opportunity to try the Linux release candidate of version 2.1 this weekend.
Well, I must admit, things have improved a lot. Following a brief registration process, which directly compared to Skype seems a little bit too complicated, I got connected to WengoPhone and could place my first call. The sound quality does not quit match that of Skype. And the WengoPhone smilies just look plain awful. But those are things that probably will be improved pretty soon. Also the software crashed several times, but after all it’s just a release candidate.
What I found mildly annoying was the fact that Wengo refused to register a second account from my IP address. How am I supposed to get a class of 30 students to register when I have to get a new IP address for each student?
So what’s better than Skype? Well, for one thing WengoPhone is open source and it uses open standards, whereas Skype is proprietary and owned by a single corporation. Skype is free for now, but who knows what will happen once it gains a large market percentage. So open source is definitely the safer choice.
Also the Linux client of WengoPhone is fully featured, i.e. it includes webcam support as well as conference calls. The Skype version for Linux has been lacking this for ages.
Anyway, I hope the OpenWengo team will keep improving their client and I’m looking forward to using it full time one day.
