ClickBack

Click Online's regular feedback slot allows you to have your say on issues mentioned in the programme and other technology matters.

Our recent feature on Internet telephony got a lot of you talking.

Gill Oxley in the UK reckons the prospect of cheap or free calls over the internet is getting the mobile industry running scared:

"The man who was interviewed on behalf of the mobile providers said that it would not benefit their companies. Of course this is true because it will take away revenue immediately from them - it already does. It is about time that the mobile telephony companies in the UK were given a shock like this and brought their prices down."

That sentiment was echoed by lots of you. Martin Ford, who is based in Italy, is one of 80 million users of Skype, the runaway success story of Internet telephony:

"I now call from my desk using Skype to ordinary landlines at one euro per hour almost anywhere in the world. I can monitor my account better and I don't have to move from my PC. When the 'garden wall' of mobile phone companies is broken, broadband technology will be available to us all wherever we are."

Über techhie Alejandro Candioti, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, really is trailblazing the new technology:

"On January 28, on my way to Japan for a family vacation, I felt catapulted to the future.

At 10,000 metres above the Yellow Sea, on an All Nippon Airways flight from Shanghai to Tokyo, I was able to power my laptop computer on a regular 110volt plug in my economy class seat, connect to wireless high-speed Internet during the entire flight, and talk on the phone with my mother in Berlin and a friend in Buenos Aires using my VOIP technology at no additional cost and with fantastic sound quality. VOIP telephony is here to stay. Inflight Internet may become her best friend."

We had literally dozens of you extolling the virtues of Skype and other services, though a few of you, like Janet Best in London, need a bit more convincing that Internet phone calls are the way forward:

"I am not a very techie person, but I found it very simple and easy to use and set up. It is great being hands-free. However, all calls made had high levels of static interference which made it difficult to hear. Also there was a significant time delay which was annoying. Message lost if speakers speak at the same time. I am still trying to resolve these issues."

That time lag, latency, as it is known, can still be an issue for internet telephony, though things have improved significantly, and sometimes the call quality is better than a regular phone.

As a minimum you really should have a broadband connection, and bear in mind there are no cast-iron guarantees, as the 'net can become choked with traffic.

---

Web browsing seems to still be on your mind, in particular Firefox, which is the open source alternative to Internet Explorer. Most of you seem to like it, though one or two of you, like Kristian from South Korea, have concerns:

"I still need to keep IE because a lot of webpages don't work properly in other browsers. I understand that the reason is the popularity of IE and therefore web designers making their pages 'optimized for IE', but why ONLY?!"

While it is true that some code is written with IE in mind, web designers surely have to be turning their minds towards creating for Firefox.

With more than 30 million downloads, it simply canot be ignored. Some of you, like Richard Gamester, are distinctly unphased by all the hype surrounding Firefox:

"As far as I can tell, Firefox is just a cut down version of the latest Netscape browser. As they both come from www.mozilla.org this is hardly surprising. One thing I like about Netscape is the use of tabs, allowing two or three pages to be held in one window. No doubt the new IE will also have this feature when it is released."

There are plenty of people who would love to see tabbed browsing incorporated into IE7, but it is worth pointing out that there are already modifications of current versions of Internet Explorer that already feature tabbed browsing, such as Avant browser, for example.

It is a free download which uses the IE backend and which is therefore ideal if you are wedded to Explorer but want to improve or change your surfing experience.

---

Do keep your views coming in, by visiting our "Contact us" page.

---

Click Online is broadcast on BBC News 24: Saturday at 0745, 2030, Sunday at 0430, 0645 and 1630, Monday at 0030. Also BBC Two: Saturday at 0745 and BBC One: Sunday at 0645. Also BBC World.

---