Microsoft Is Ready to Supply a Phone in Every Computer

Microsoft Is Ready to Supply a Phone in Every Computer: "The ability to use the personal computer as an 'intelligent' phone has been viewed largely as a curiosity by the computer and telecommunications industries, not to mention by consumers. Internet telephony has mostly not been high quality, and conversations are frequently plagued with static and delays. It has also been difficult for computer telephone callers to find each other without inconvenient and sometimes costly third-party directory services.
That is likely to change rapidly as Microsoft's new software prepares to exploit the next generation of the Internet, offering computer-based telephony with better-quality voice than before and with more powerful features than the traditional phone."

I'm working on a report covering real-time communication/collaboration tools and was reminded of this John Markoff article -- from 2001/06/12. The more things change...