Call waiting for the PC?

Factual Questions
1

My fellow Dopers, Greetings & Salutations! Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

My father-in-law - a PC novice - has asked me about a phone service, ISP service or software whereby those of us who can not afford DSL (or live too far out in the sticks for DSL = me) and use dial-up networking can receive telephone calls while online(?). I recall hearing something about this several years ago but I never did any follow-up. A pop-up window appears and you can decide whether or not to accept the call and talk through a mic attached to the PC - that’s what I remember but don’t recall who, what, where the service/software is offered. What do you know about this? Is this something to be downloaded from C|Net or does he need to call Bellsouth?

My father-in-law has his PC configured to automatically dial-up whenever any 'Net/communications program is running - Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IE, Net2Phone, etc. so his phone line is always busy (Personally, I tell my friends and relatives to page me).

Thank you very nice!

ConMan

2

There are several services out there, CallWave being the one that pops into my head. Do a Google search under “internet call waiting” and pick one.

FWIW, we went through that whole thing at this end this past spring, and we came to the conclusion that none of them did what we wanted. What we wanted was for the incoming phone call to bump us off the Internet, so that we could take the call. However, all these call waiting services do the same thing–they amount to the caller leaving a message on an answering machine, and then you have to get back to them. In other words, we found that the caller isn’t sitting there waiting for you to pick up the phone. By the time you get the pop-up window telling you that you have a call, he’s left his message (or not) and has hung up.

Some of the services re-route the call all around Robin Hood’s barn, with a call forwarding thing, finally sending the call to their 800 number, where, again, the caller leaves a message.

Then we tried the gadget that is supposed to hook up to your phone line and flash or beep whenever you’ve got a call waiting, but we couldn’t get it to work. Also, they don’t carry them at Office Max anymore, so we had to buy it on-line, although I will say that they were very nice about sending us our refund promptly.

We finally ended up paying for a second telephone line just for the computer, and let me say that it’s well worth the $55 installation fee, the $115 for the electrician to connect it, and the $9 a month it’s going to cost. We can sit here and surf 24/7 and never worry about missing calls. And with two teens and one pre-teen, let me tell you, that was a crisis for a while there. “My social life is in the toilet because Mom’s always doing the Straight Dope!”

If your dad-in-law is a “novice”, like me, then he might not be comfortable with the sheer amount of electronic “what to do when that funny little box pops up” or “which button do I push now?”. If he’s got the bucks, I’d advise him to spring for the second phone line.

3

Sorry, forgot to say that AFAIK the telephone company does not offer this kind of service, it’s all in the hands of entrepreneurs (which is probably not a bad thing). :smiley: Some services are free, and you have to look at ad banners, other services charge.