Conducting a business meeting and one or more attendees are not in the boardroom but are availble via Skype or SkypeOut? If so, you have the perfect application for a speakerphone.

Maybe you have family members in a conference setting? Again a perfect application for a speakerphone.

In my experince, most calls using a boom microphone and speakers are not of good quality and often result in echo.

I just tested the Radio Shack MV 100 $39 speakerphone with JP White, a Skyper in Nashville, TN. I was very impressed. Even when he walked twenty-feet away I could hear him clearly. Same when he turned his back to the microphone.

Best of all, no echo.

No big surprise. The MV100 is a USB device using DSP technology.

I will pick one up tomorrow while I am in the Bay Area meeting with Stuart and Phil. Radio Shack closed all their stores in Canada.

Thanks for testing with me JP!

From J.P. White

At my end of the converstaion with Bill using the MV100 speaker phone, I found that turning the volume up too loud caused bad distortion of Bill's voice. I had to maintain a volume of about 1/2. I would have liked for it to go a bit louder but, at the price, it is ideal for a small conference room or home application. All volume adjustments and call initiation/answering are done on the PC.

Being a speakerphone you have to be cognizant of background noises that can interfere with the clarity of you own voice.

It can't rival a Polycom speakerphone but they cost many $100's and connect to POTS lines not PC's.

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