Phone.com's New Software Turns Laptops into Virtual Office Phones

By Ed Silverstein, TMCnet Contributor

Phone.com’s (News - Alert) Communicator software lets a laptop be transformed into an office phone wherever you are. It operates like an extension of the phones found at offices or small businesses.

“We wanted to create a situation where the customer can take the office to wherever their workplace is located whether it’s traveling overseas, working outside the office … and so on. This way wherever your laptop is, your office is,” Alon Cohen (News - Alert), executive vice president and CTO of Phone.com, told TMCnet.

The offering also goes beyond options like a voice or video-enabled messenger program.

“What Communicator does is [it] turns your computer into an extension of your small business phone system,” industry analyst Stuart Zipper added in a Phone.com blog post. “What it means is that you can be sitting in a hotel room in Paris, connected to the Internet, and have an extension of your office phone system right there with you. All the so-called ‘free’ VoIP apps can’t provide you with that.”

An added plus for small businesses is that callers do not know you are not in the office – but can still reach you. It allows users to access an address book, call logs and inbox. Communicator software requires a Virtual Office plan with a Communicator extension, the company said on its website.

In addition, Communicator is just software so there is no need for complex or time-consuming assembly of hardware. It also lets users employ a Bluetooth headset. And it can be used on a desktop computer.

Communicator also supports video. "Communicator allows Phone.com customers to quickly and easily add real-time video calling to their communications tools without the need for expensive telephones or video systems," Ari Rabban (News - Alert), Phone.com co-founder and CEO, said in a statement carried by TMCnet.

Some of the system requirements include Intel (News - Alert) Pentium 4 2.4GHz or the equivalent, with the optimal being Intel Core 2 Duo or the equivalent, and video card with DirectX 9.0c support. For video, Intel Core 2 Duo 3.0GHz or the equivalent, or a triple- or quad-core processor are recommended. Video card with DirectX 9.0c support is also recommended. The minimum memory is 1GB RAM (News - Alert), with the optimal being 2GB RAM. Communicator software is a Windows and Mac OS X application.

Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli