Communicator Blue C100S USB Speakerphone for Skype

List Price: $121.99 Discount Price: $110.22

Features:

• Satisfaction Ensured.
• Manufactured to the Highest Quality Available.
• With True Enhanced Performance.
• Latest Technical Development.

Customer Reviews:

Best skype phone out there! [Posted on 2007-04-20]
This speaker phone is great! It is small, portable, and gives clear sound that is largely echo-free (a frequent problem with skype that tries to save on bandwidth) though perhaps not quite up to the best headphone. My only gripe is the limited microphone volume which listeners sometimes complain about.

Great Product & Fair Price [Posted on 2007-06-06]
I am an independent consultant who needs to make a lot of calls, frequently long conference calls and quite often to Europe. After researching numerous options I settled on Skype as providing the cost and flexibility I needed to facilitate my needs which includes making calls on the road. I then needed to optimize the way I communicate with Skype and progressed from the built in microphone and speaker on my laptop (too much feedback), to a headset, both bluetooth and wired (OK but tethered to the computer with wired and comfort in hour two with Bluetooth), to a speaker phone. Having used the Polycom speaker phones for many years in Corporate America I was familiar with their superior build quality and excellent audio clarity and performance. I also considered wireless Skype phones but the chargers and auxiliary hardware I would need to carry on the road ruled them out.
The Polycom C100S has been great with no issues on microphone or speaker setup and performance. I do note that the clarity of the calls is better on "wired" high speed connections as opposed to "wireless" connections but even the "wireless" is adequate. The "wired" connections are clear with excellent tonal range and performance. The reviewers who have had performance problems may want to try a "wired" connection to their high speed internet before they bail out of this product.
The only knock I would have is that the built in USB cable does not look as robust as the rest of the unit and is a bit difficult to wind up properly so that the case closes cleanly. The unit is self contained in the convenient carry case and requires no additional cables, power supplies or other accessories - very portable. All in all I am quite pleased with the product and would repeat the purchase again.

Not Polycom's best product [Posted on 2008-01-07]
I am a big Polycom fan, but this is by far not their best product.
I bought this for a small-sized conference room, and found that
both the speaker gain and the microphone volume was far below
what was needed for any kind of reasonable performance. If the
speaker sat right in front of the unit, the performance was passable,
but otherwise we often had to resort to just calling back on a land
line (with our Polycom speaker phone).

This might be fine for somebody sitting in their office, but then
why not just use a wireless headset?

Wildly great and awful all at the same time [Posted on 2008-02-01]
Everyone who gives the Polycom Communicator C100S a great rating is absolutely correct. Under Windows XP this device is awesome. The sound quality is great on both ends. It doesn't take you long to realize that you are carrying on a conversation in a much more natural manner without a headset on.

When you want to use this device on any operating system other than Windows XP, you'll find that the device is nothing more than a cheap speaker and desktop microphone. Of course it works with Skype on Linux, MacOS and Windows Vista, just like any other speaker and desktop microphone do. Crappily.

The magic of this device is in the software. The echo cancellation and sound quality are all products of the drivers that lie between Skype and the device. Wihout those drivers, the device is just an expensive USB speaker/microphone. Those who say that the device works with MacOS and Vista are only partially right. The Skype integration buttons do not work on anything but XP and I could live with that. But the audio processing in the driver is what makes this device usable with Skype. Without it, there is terrible echo from your side that makes the device unusable. You may as well use a cheap pair of speakers and a cheap desktop microphone. You'll get the same performance and it'll cost you a lot less.

Windows Vista has been available to the software developers at Polycom for over a year now and there is apparently no Vista driver in the works. This means that the Polycom Communicator C100S is useless for almost all new computer purchasers. (I did recently read that Dell is now offering Windows XP on some new PC purchases. I belive for enterprise level buyers only though.)

There is apparently now no plan to release a Mac driver, as if there was ever one in development. Which I highly doubt. So, according to my spidey senses, unless you use Windows XP exclusively, and don't have any plans for a new computer, purchasing this device now is a waste of money.

This is a terrible shame as the Polycom Communicator C100S is an awesome device and I was really looking forward to using it when I purchased it. So far I haven't been able to use it more than once, as they haven't released any Vista drivers. I did use it once with a VMWare virtual machine running Windows XP, just to make sure that my device wasn't broken, and it does work as advertised on Windows XP.

Vista drivers were supposed to be released mid 2007, but it's almost mid 2008 now and there are no hints that they have ever assigned a software guy the task of writing them. My advice is to wait until Polycom shows some interest in supporting this device with current operating systems before shelling out any money for it. :o(

Exceeds expectations under trying circumstances [Posted on 2008-08-11]
Most reviews I've read agree that the C100S is an exceptional device, as long as you are using XP; If you don't have XP, it doesn't work very well.

Both statements are true, and if that was all I had to say, I wouldn't have bothered to write this review.

However, my use case is far more demanding than most of the "strictly for business" cases I've seen, and the phone really exceeded my expectations.

I purchased it to help a D&D campaign survive with players traveling on game nights.

It's primary usage, therefore, was to maintain a 4 hour conference call in a 15x30' room with 5-8 socializing, die-rolling people, without loss of sanity by the remote players.

On an XP box, it worked flawlessly. The remote players could hear everything from all the people at varying distances around the table, and enjoyed themselves. Even people at the opposite end of the table were able to hear and be heard.

Pros:
- Easy, intuitive setup
- Outstanding performance (whispers from 20' are picked up)
- Very compact; Comparable to a stack of 4x6" index cards.

Cons:
- The usb cable is both hard-wired to the device, and flimsy.
- Only really works on XP; Sounds terrible otherwise.
- Only works on a native XP Skype install (not a U3 install)

The -1 star is for the USB cable, and lack of other drivers.

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