What is a Soft Phone?
A Soft Phone is a phone which is virtual. This phone is the combination of your computer and a headset. You can place calls receive calls just like if you had a regular phone. People Line currently recommends soft phones from x-Ten. The x-Ten Lite softphone is free to download for Windows and Mac, and the x-Ten Eyebeam costs $79 CDN to license. Both allow you to call regular phones (land lines/cell phones) and receive calls from regular phones. The x-Ten Eyebeam, however, supports additional features such as call forwarding, conferencing, call hold and transfer, as well as up to 6 lines. There are also Macintosh and Pocket PC versions of the Eyebeam version. The Lite version works on PC/Windows and Mac OS. For more information, click here.
A soft phone is a computer application that allows users to make telephone calls directly from their computer. A soft phone is most often used in conjunction with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a form of computer telephony. The soft phone is part of a category of technology known as computer telephony integration (CTI). With a soft phone, calls can be made from the PC to a phone line, from a phone to the PC, or between soft phone-enabled computers. The software for a soft phone usually mimics the appearance of a real handset and can take the form of either a standalone program with its own window, or an embedded program in a Web application or other PC program. Commands can be entered through either the keyboard or the onscreen interface. Conversations are conducted on a headset with a built-in microphone, with a microphone and the computer’s speakers, or on a USB phone — a handset that plugs into computers’ USB ports. The computer’s sound card is used to provide audio input and
In computing, a soft client or soft phone is a software program for making telephone calls over the Internet using a general purpose computer, rather than using dedicated hardware. Often a soft phone is designed to behave like a traditional telephone, sometimes appearing as an image of a phone, with a display panel and buttons with which the user can interact. A soft phone is usually used with a headset connected to the sound card of the PC.
