Thanks Martin,

Ironically I was just looking at Gradwell only a few moments ago.. I shall look into them in more detail as well

www.poseidon.uk.com

Hi
I successfully used Voiptalk and .connexin.- both worked great for me. I used to use Snom hardware, very good but expensive, I recently changed to Yealink T38, which was much cheaper and performs very well.
hope this helps
Key

3CX do an IP PBX with all the usual phone features and it is free to download and fully functional with a limited number of simultaneous outgoing calls unless you buy one of the many licenses. It will run on virtually any Windows platform and has a very simple User Interface. It also allows you to set up a VoIP Trunk using SIP with any providers.

www.3cx.com if you are at all interested?

Thanks I will check them out

We install large numbers of VoIP systems and find the Yealink T38's not up to the job, although this is our own view and ymmv.

We used to use a lot of the Snom devices but since firmware version 8 they seem to hang and crash more than ever before. Again, our own view and ymmv.

The main devices we're installing these days is Cisco Small Business (Linksys really) SPA devices. The SPA303 performs brilliantly and costs peanuts.

Whilst 3CX are good, it costs for a lot of things.

Trixbox CE (www.trixbox.com) will do more than you ever dreamed possible for completely free. For stability, stick with Asterisk 1.4 as my personal opinion is that Asterisk 1.6 isn't quite production software.

/me dons fireproof coat for that statement!

As such, Trixbox 2.6.2.3 would be ideal and is easy to setup and configure. Just make sure that you reduce your attack surface area by only allowing permitted IPs SIP access through your firewall and also, whilst not as much use these days, installing fail2ban is a good idea.

thanks for both the comments, and ideas..

so are you suggesting "hosting" the voip service myself? I have a mate who can donate a PC running XP on it, which I am sure I can do something with.. and I have Broadband, but it's not overly fast..

so suggestions on how I could run it would be most welcome

am a bit lost now

You don't want to be running any important services on Windows, so if you get that computer and want to host it yourself you'll need to install something like PBX in a Flash. Not used it myself but it seems to be well regarded even if it's using Asterisk instead of FreeSwitch.

There are lots of hosted solutions around, but most of them charge for various features. I just came across a new one today that's currently in beta but it might do what you want if you can get an invitation and it looks like it's free for up to 5 seats. Kazoo from 2600hz.

Thanks I will also check them out..

Am still a bit confused about how to do this.. seemed like a good idea at the time

and in part it still does