Enthusiasm is my Passion
Wengophone is a communication-over-IP application. With Wengophone you can:
And this all comes for free. If you also buy credits from Wengo, a French Voice-over-IP service provider that backs the development of Wengophone, you can also:
Well, since you are reading Free Software Magazine, I’ll assume that you understand why I consider Wengophone superior to Skype in this respect. If it isn’t clear to you yet, there plenty of articles in this magazine that will help you to understand why. I don’t want to sound like an extremist here, and I’ll give a +1 to Wengo.
Having a multi-platform application means that if you have to work outside your operating system of choice, you can still use the application. I think this is a distinct advantage and give a +2 to both.
This needs a bit more of explanation. Audio in GNU/Linux means mainly two things: OSS (Open Sound System, born in 1992) and ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). With the advent of the 2.6 kernel, OSS was deprecated in favour of ALSA. Skype is using a deprecated sound system, Wengo is not.
ALSA has many advantages over OSS. The main one we are interested in here is the friendliness of ALSA in respect of the access to the sound card. An OSS application tends to take exclusive access to the sound card, not allowing any other application to use it: unless you trick it, you can’t have both Skype and XMMS playing nicely together, for example.
On the other hand, ALSA supports many applications sharing the same sound card, and this is a really good thing. All this is enough to give a +1 to Wengo, even if the ALSA support is still in heavy development at the moment.
Well, we are talking about softphones, so this feature is actually a “must” and expected. +1 to both.
This is just a nice feature, not really necessary but a nice-to-have one. Skype doesn’t have it in the Linux version, Wengophone has it on all systems. +1 to Wengo.
As above, a nice feature. Wengo has it: +1 for it.
The audio quality is good in both. I had phone calls with both Skype and Wengo. In particular, I tested Wengo calling Tony Mobily to his phone in Australia: good audio, low latency… Good in both: +1.
With Skype you are bound to Skype. Fullstop. With Wengophone, plans for the 2.2 release say that you will be able to choose any service provider that supports the SIP protocol. Taking this the other way round, you are not forced to use Wengophone to use Wengo’s services: any SIP application will do. That’s what I call “freedom to choose”, and deserves at least a +1.
Using standard protocols means that you are more free to choose which application to use for a service (see above). Wengo supports many different standard (or de-facto standard) protocols, Skype supports itself. +1 for Wengo.
This is a nice feature, and both of the competitors have it: +1 to both.
This is a very nice feature: you can still use your IM contacts without having half a dozen IM applications spread on your desktop. Wengo supports a lot of IM protocols, Skype again supports just itself. +1 for Wengo again.
According to the status bar of Skype, every day you have more than six million users online during business days; when I started using Skype last year it barely had 4 million users online: that’s a 50% increment in one year and it’s a huge user-base spread all over the globe. Wengo doesn’t seem to have as large or widespread a user base as Skype, which means that at the moment there is still a user community to build, it will take time and it will need your help. This is a distinct advantage for Skype, and a +2 for it.
Having a centralised, server-based contact list means that you don’t have to keep your contact list in sync when you use an application on two different computers (e.g.: at home and in the office). I have a few Wengo contacts in the office, and a few more at home, and keeping them in sync is a headache already. Believe it or not, this feature is a distinct advantage; Skype has it, and it’s a +2 for it.
Well, we are talking about a stable release of Skype versus a beta version of Wengophone (and the beta 1 version actually has alpha quality): it’s clearly an easy win for Skype, at least a +1
Skype builds both DEB and RPM packages of his software, and has a repository that Debian and Ubuntu users can use to keep the application up-to-date. Wengophone 2.0 beta doesn’t come in a package yet, and hence is not as easy to install as Skype. Of course, when the final release of Wengo is out you’ll have a DEB package just as you have one for the “Classic” client. So for now, it’s +1 for Skype.
Summing up, I should say that Wengophone beats Skype 12 to 11. It’s not a big win, but if you look at the points where Skype beats Wengo you can expect the situation to change as soon as a stable release comes out (e.g.: Wengo will gain some more points for stability and ease of install with a stable release). Letting it gain other points for the user base will depend on you using it, and getting a centralised contact list may depend on you whether you are a developer… So, download a copy and lend a hand!
Source : http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com