Yahoo Phone-in and Netgear XE102 Powerline Adapters

I picked up a pair of refurbished Netgear XE102 Powerline Adapters on eBay. These things are very cool. Powerline adapters let you use your home's existing power wiring as network cable. Each unit is identical. They have a standard 2 pronged wall plug and an RJ45 port. You plug one in where your connectivity is, and plug the other one to another outlet in your house where you want connectivity.

I've been using Yahoo's phone-in service in my home office. It's basically phone service through Yahoo messenger. It's like $30/year to have a phone number that people can call. Incoming calls are free. Outgoing calls are a penny a minute and toll-free calls are free. It's a really cheap way to have a home phone. You prepay your account, so I put $10 in mine, and I'm still going. 1-cent per minute for only outgoing non-800 calls takes a long time to use up!

Anyway, I recently had to switch my network equipment around and the router ended up in the living room, so in the office I was on the wireless. The wireless network throughput wasn't enough to run the Yahoo phone successfully. So, I picked up the powerline adapters. Now I'm not wireless any more, but using the wiring in my house as network cable. I'm connected and things are speedy, plenty speedy enough to run the phone.

These things are cool. Just when you think wireless is the way to go, something like this comes along.