In computer news this week, 03/14/2000

One of the biggest obstacles to people using the Internet is their typing skills, or lack of. Millions of people can't type, and sitting them down in front of a computer is cruel and unusual punishment. Watch them hunt and peck; some use 2 fingers, some just one, and it's frustrating - for them and for the people they're typing to; particularly if they're in a chat room or online conversation.

Recently a friend of mine who use to live here but who moved back down South emailed me an internet voice program he had just started using, so I decided to check it out.

The program is called Paltalk, and you can download it from paltalk.com. Not only is the program free, but it is also a fast download, less than a minute. Then you go through an easy setup program and then you're ready to talk to any of your friends on the internet - for free, as long as they have the program too.

System requirements are Windows, a sound card, sound control software, and a voice microphone. Your computer probably has a sound card and the software, but you may need to buy a microphone. You can buy one of those goose-necked microphones for as low as $ 10 or so, and Paltalk has many sound accessories you can purchase online.

Once you've got everything set up and ready, you can begin Pal talking, and you'll find it's a lot like a telephone, a little like email and a little like chat rooms. My friend down South had sent me the program via email, and you can email the program to any of your friends. I saw his name in my address book when I signed on, but he wasn't online, so I sent him a text message saying I would be online later and would look for him. A couple hours later when I logged on to check my email, Paltalk started up automatically and I saw that he was online, and rang him. He answered right away, and we began adjusting our sound controls so we could speak.

Paltalk has both a manual speaking mode, where you press the control key to talk, and release it to listen, and also a hands free mode, where you just sit there and talk and listen without having to press any keys. I started on the hands free mode and it worked fine. He said he could hear me fine, but that he was getting some feedback of his own voice at his end. He kept trying to make adjustments which got the sound better, but not perfect.

The Paltalk company also suggests that if you have difficulty making AOL, Compuserve, or one of the pay services work with their program, that you switch to one of the many free internet services, like juno, netzero, alta vista, or free Inet, and your problems will be over. Seems like everything is turning to free on the internet these days.

We were able to have an easy conversation, without having to shout or get right up on the microphone. In fact he was amazed at how good the conversation quality was. He lives in Atlanta, so we were almost 3 thousands miles apart.

Paltalk also offers online talkrooms, similar to the Aol chatrooms; they appear to be better regulated and with some different topics, so if you don't have any friend to talk to long distance, you can still find somebody to talk to. You can set up your own address book, just like an email program.

The purpose of this program is to allow you to talk to friends and relatives in other cities who have computers, instead of typing messages to them, and to save you money on your long distance phone calls. But you can also use it to talk to someone locally.

I did a search for other similar programs, and found a few others, but the most important thing is to find one that works, is simple, and is free.

So far Paltalk is doing it for me, and I'll review it again after I've used it more.

For Raw Bytes, this is Frank Delaney

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