Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger Review

I have been a user of Yahoo! Messenger's phone out and phone in services for several months now. It was only recently, though, that I picked up the Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger, which debuted last November. It has made an already great service any greater.

The reason I first started using Yahoo! Messengers phone out/phone in (which allows me to make calls out as well as receive calls through Yahoo! Messenger) was the price. For $2.99 a month I got my Yahoo phone number, which can be called from any landline phone anywhere in the world. As for calls out, it is only $0.01 a minute for calls to several countries and only $0.02 a minute for calls anywhere in the US.

Cheap long distance calls are definitely a plus. Secondly, since my phone number doesn't change with Yahoo! and I travel a lot, no matter where I am my phone comes with me and family and friends can call me with ease without having to pay their own long distance charges.

Unfortunately there was a problem, and that was sound quality. I used a headset, which worked adequately and I rarely had a problem hearing who I was talking too, but the connection for the microphone was not always the strongest, which occasionally made for some frustrating phone calls.

Then I got my Linksys CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger. It plugs into the computer through a hi-speed USB 2.0 port, so data is traveling much more rapidly and much cleaner than through my not always so trusty old headset. In fact, speaking through the Yahoo! Messenger phone out or phone in service was just as crystal clear as you would hear from any decent telephones these days, if not a little bit clearer than some.

As the name says, this is a cordless phone, and the range on it is impressive. It lists its range at 100 feet, and that seems pretty much accurate. I can walk from my apartment, close the apartment door, head on down the stairs and be at my car in the parking lot and the line never misses a beat. I've never even had a regular cordless phone that had that decent of handset range.