So since I work from home about one day a week (and then a week at a time when I go on-call) I decided to rock the Skype for my conference calls instead of burning up my cell phone minutes (we do not have a landline phone).
My first thought was to use the Bluetooth headset I have for my cell phone with my Mac for making Skype calls. That worked great except that it totally interfered with my Bluetooth mouse. So that idea was kicked to the curb.
I instead got a Logitech USB headset, because a) it was certified as Skype-compatible, and b) it was hella cheap.
It’s working great EXCEPT for the fact that the headphones are the big “over the ear” DJ-style headphones. Which are fine, I guess, except for two things:
1) I actually prefer a single earphone for phone calls – I do not need to be “immersed”
2) They act like earmuffs and my ears get warm after about 20 minutes. This will be nice in the winter, but it sucks now.
The cool thing is that Skype makes it really easy to on-the-fly switch the outputs, so since for most conference calls I am just sitting and listening, I can shut the output to the computer’s speakers and put the call on mute – and the switch to the headset if I suddenly need to talk.
I figure I’ll try it out for a while and see how well it works – if I really like it, maybe one day Carrie and I will invest in a Skype phone and that could save us some more dollars. Although I don’t think it would; most of the calls Carrie makes from home are “night and weekends”, so Skype probably doesn’t help us that much.