Unified Communications

Is there a way to monitor my bandwidth use with Skype?

One of my friends installed a VoIP system in her small business after AT&T increased her phone service rate by 300%. However, she is having problems getting her credit card machine to work with it; She consistently gets an error when it tries to send.

Will a fax machine work ok with a SIP/VoIP telephone system?

Ok, I understand that I need a certain amount of bandwidth to ensure good call quality on a VoIP system, but what is the most important factor in call quality, assuming you have sufficient bandwidth? We have QoS rules in place that prioritize voice traffic, but how much do factors like latency and jitter affect sound quality?

Someone told me that there was a way to set up push notifications on your PC so you don't have to constantly pull out your Android when you are sitting at your desk and get a message alert. Kind of like how you get notifications on your phone, but in reverse. Any idea how to do this?

I would like to cut the telephone cord at my house and switch over to a VoIP system. It would save me hundreds of dollars per year, but my concern is the fastest internet service I can get where I live is DSL with 3Mbps download speed. Correction "up to 3Mbps". The reality is that when I do a speed test I almost always get 2.45Mbps.

Microsoft has started offering "conversation ads" based on location, age and gender that pop up beside the image of the person with whom you are skyping. According to Microsoft, these "conversation ads" will generate additional topics of conversation and generate interactivity between users.

I've seen a couple of articles recently about shedding email and relying on social networks and other services for communication needs instead. Is this a viable choice in practice, or is ditching email the domain of the truly dedicated to maximizing communication efficiency?

Is there an easy way to determine the amount of bandwidth required for a given number of voice paths through an IP network? I want to be certain that there is sufficient bandwidth to avoid quality issues with voice transmissions before going down the VoIP road.

How can a business best decide whether hosted services or on-premises hardware is better suited for its unified communication needs? We are at a point where we have to either make a capital expenditure for new on-site servers or go with a provider. But how does one effectively weigh whether a hosted service is the right choice vs. on-site?

We have a few hundred seats of Microsoft Office. Adding Lync will entail some serious cost planning to implement. Is it possible to use another vendor's UC system and integrate it with our existing Exchange / Outlook infrastructure?