mVox USB Speakerphone
The simple things in life are the best
Over the years, I have used many different tools for conference calls.  My favorite has always been the various Polycom Soundstation devices which are excellent.  Polycom has two big drawbacks however - they are quite expensive ($500-$1000 depending on options) and very bulky. <br /> <br />mVox shows how to provide a similar facility for VoIP calls, at a fraction of the price, and with the added advantage of being quite portable. <br /> <br />This small, credit card sized, speakerphone plugs into a USB port and just works.  The small size allows it to easily travel with my laptop. It has excellent echo-cancellation.  It handles jitter reasonably well.  Since its an audio device, it can't directly handle packet-loss itself.  However, Skype handles that as well as any VoIP application ever does. The microphone is fairly sensitive - I've used it will eight people around a table and all could be clearly heard at the other end of the call. <br /> <br />The mVox is one of those joys of life which just works.  It doesn't have any complex setup.  I can connect it to a colleagues laptop and confidently expect it to work correctly first time. <br /> <br />It only has one drawback - it has a limited frequency response.  Calls over the mVox sound like AM radio talkback.  The conversation is very clear, but it lacks high and low frequencies.  For conference calls, I have never found this a major problem. <br /> <br />Highly recommended.