How would you feel being able to see the person on the other end of the call?

As some of you may or may not already know my father moved to Pattaya Thailand about three years ago. He is living out an incredible retirement over there for about a quarter of what it would cost for him to live the same way in the United States.

Typically he will come home over the holidays for about a month to spend time with his friends, children, grandchildren, etc. Unfortunately with extremely high fuel prices this year it was going to cost him nearly double the typical airfare to come visit and he decided that it would be smarter to wait and to come visit another time.

I decided to try to find a good way to be able to communicate with him. I needed something that would allow my brother and sister who do not have computers to be able to talk to my dad and I wanted to be able to do video as well. I came across a great video phone product that appeared to cover all of the requirements.

The Good:

o Free international calls to other video phones

o Crystal clear video

o Inexpensive (less than $200 shipped and only $30 a month)

o Replaces my home phone line

o Was extremely simple to configure

o 4 way video conference calling

The Bad:

o Intermittent Lock-ups

o Long boot time

I was extremely excited when I found this and immediately purchased one for myself and another as a gift for my dad. I promptly sent it overnight via FedEx to Thailand and waited for my dad to call. The next day I received my first video voicemail from him letting me know that he had successfully hooked it all up and was hoping I would receive the message. It was so awesome to get to see him and the quality between Tucson and Pattaya was amazing.

I am in the process of learning how to wire the video phone into my house so that all of my cordless phones work through the VOIP as well. I’ll write instructions up once I’m finished and post them here…

If you’d like to get a video phone of your own you can order them here…