Why aren't washing machines good for phones?

[Mitchell]

Here's something to laugh at, the crappy little wireless sanyo phone I bought about a year ago to use with voip, and never was able to because the call qaulity was so low, recently had a spin in the washing machine... one of those great frontloaders that you folks in Europe will know well...lol. Beleive it or not, it still worked when it came out! Temporarily... It's been about a month now, and the effects are starting to show. Can't receive incoming calls that well... so we switched to using it for outgoing voip calls instead... yeah, it's not any better than when I first tried it.... so...

 

What this basically means is I have alot of new hardware to buy. My current ADSL 2+ voip modem/router is locked to an Australian service called TPG, and all attepmts to unlock it have failed. I wouldn't mind a great deal, except their service isn't great, and I can't have an inbound number... I can only make calls out. To make matters worse, I can't seem to use any softphone from my computer with this modem; because it's voip enabled, it does funny things with SIP packets. Apparently this is pretty standard with voip enabled modems. (voip enabled=being able to plug ordinary phone into it). It's also not wireless, so I've had a belkin router plugged into it.

 

Sobasically I'm going to turf my old equipment. Anyone want to buy a Belkin router? I'm giving the old modem away, and would like to buy a wireless adsl2+ modem/router (preferably with at least two ports), and a seperate voip adapter. Seems I can get these for about $200 Australian, but I'm unsure what's going to work well with Mandriva. Any ideas people? Have looked into D-link for the Voip adapter, but no real punters yet for the modem. Needs to be wireless, needs to be adsl2+, and needs NOT to have any inbuilt voip capabilities. Thanks folks!

[Mitchell]

Incidentally, if anyone does want a Belkin router, this one works fine. Seems silly to keep it if I'm getting a new modem anyway. Cheers.

[scoonma]

Before spending 200 AUS$, I'd open up the phone and try to locate possible errors (corroded soldering points or strip lines). If it's broken anyhow, you can't do real harm.

 

I'm suggesting this because I've been used to wash hardware (mainboard, keyboard after picking single keys off...) when it was expensive to clean from dust - not in a machine though - but if after drying properly with soft tissue and blow-dryer, there used to be no big problems - well, just on software level, but that's a different story.

 

If your phone was working for a month from then, maybe the error source is elsewhere.

 

Can't help on the router aspect though.

 

Good luck!

[ianw1974]

I was riding my motorbike without wet weather gear for two hours and got soaked to the skin. Alas, so did my Motorola mobile phone as well. I put it under a hand dryer when I got to work as I could see water behind the display like it was a fish tank. Managed to get it dried out, but I didn't use it for a few days to make sure as well. Worked fine ever since, although I sold it later but there was no complaints! :)

[Mitchell]

Lol... maybe I should just try selling this phone... although as it's pretty crappy to begin with I'm looking forward to turfing it. Actually, my wife and I are thinking of (gasp) going down to one phone only, and actually spending more time talking to each other. An odd twist of events? Last night a door-to-door salesman came buy, saying he was with Optus (Australian Telephone company), and offering no phone line rental and better-than-voip rates... I hate dorr-to-door salesman. Especially at dinner time. I told him (politely) to go away, then realized he was offering a very good deal. Alas, he was gone. Lol. Oh well, this is off the topic, as I still need to get another modem anyway... Cheers folks.

 

~Mitchell