Sunday, February 17, 2013

Buying Another Headset

"Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous." - Violet Crawley (Downton Abbey)

"It seems like you're always buying new headsets." It's true! I have bought a lot of headsets over the past few years, but when you are remote phone warrior, the headset is a very important weapon in the battle against work.

When I first switched to be super-remote a couple of years ago, I worked out a fantastic trick combining my AT&T phone plan and Google Voice account to be able to get all my work calls through my mobile phone with unlimited minutes. It was awesome and I needed a good headset for my phone. I got the BlueParrot Xpress for my iPhone and it is amazing. I has a giant boom mic and the most incredible noise cancellation I have ever seen. I will be walking home in San Francisco talking with Mrs.Chaos and semi will pass by making it impossible for me to hear anything and she will say she can hear my just great and didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. Amaze!

Now with all the fancy AT&T fiber-to-the-door upgrades we've had, I've switched off my expensive wireless phone plan with AT&T and instead focused on using Google Voice, GoToMeeting VOIP, Skype, and all the other fancy ways to talk on the phone through my computer. While technically my BlueParrot can multiplex between multiple devices, I haven't found that it works very well.

I was using in iMic adapter connected to another fancy in-ear boom mic system, but there was a problem. With that setup I'm tethered to my computer while on the phone. So I can't easily walk into the kitchen to refill my coffee and that is an essential part of my productivity.

After doing internet research I settled in on the Logitech ClearChat. World of Warcrafters agree it is the bomb. I haven't had too much opportunity to use it yet, but I have confirmed that I can be chatting away on it and easily walk into the kitchen for a refill of coffee. What more do I need?