Switching from Vonage to Ooma

I've been using Vonage for several years and have been happy, but the monthly price has been creeping up to around $33/month so I've decided to give Ooma a try. Ooma's model is a bit different. They sell the hardware for $250 (but you can get it at Amazon for $200) and promise free service for life. Now there are caveats of course. They pass the monthly government fees on to you, which is about $3.50/month, and they push hard to get you to sign up for their premier service at $10/month. At $13.50/month, the Ooma pays for itself in 10 months so I decided to leap.

During my research, I found the reviews for Ooma were very good. The exceptions are those that had to use support, and those that bought the optional handset. More on that later. So far, I've found that call quality is on par with Vonage. Its better than a mobile phone, but not as good as a landline -- that's acceptable in my book.

I decided to order the Ooma Telo (VOIP router) and handset from Costco for $230 combined. You get 60 days of premier service for free, but some of the more interesting features require the handset so I went for the package. Its $40 to do a number transfer, but if you sign up for a year of premier, they'll do the number transfer for free or send you a handset for free.

I'm pretty sure they don't make money unless you do the premier service. I think they also count on the fact that people use fewer minutes on their landline as they use their mobile phones more. One big question is whether these guys will be in business for long. I think they will.

You start by requesting a phone number and entering the Telo's activation code online. I was able to swap my Vonage router with the Telo device with no other changes. The Telo connected to the mothership and downloaded its updates. It took about 10 mins during which time my internet was down. The Telo device has buttons on it so it acts like a traditional answering machine. It has a built-in speaker for listening to voicemails, and you can hit play, rewind, delete, etc.

If you're looking for basic service, Ooma does the job well at $3.50/month. If you want extras, consider the handset ($50) and premier plan. That combination gives you caller-ID (not just the number), call screening (listen to people leaving voicemails), and an instant second line. If someone else is using the phone, you can get a second line on the handset (requires the handset) and dial out. Pretty important if you've got kids. These features work fine, but the handset has a hum, doesn't fit snuggly in the recharging cradle, and the display is difficult to read. If possible, I recommend waiting for version 2 of the handset, whenever that comes.

Other cool features include the ability to enter your contact list online (or import from Outlook) and sync to the handset. Names can have multiple phone numbers assigned, like home, work, and mobile. If the calling number is in your contact list, the name will appear (regardless of caller-ID). You can configure a blacklist to send certain numbers straight to voicemail. You can retrieve voicemails from the Telo, the handset, or online. Premier is required to have them emailed to you.

I'm still in the 60-day window for free premier, so I've not yet decided whether its worth the $10/month. I'll have to post an update when I make a decision. In the meantime, I have my Vonage number forwarded to my Ooma number as I continue to test.

Dude Ranches in Bandera

We live about 2.5 hours aways from the self-proclaimed cowboy capital of the world. So we make a yearly trek to Bandera Texas for a weekend at a dude ranch, usually in spring. The lure of a dude ranch is getting away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. On the ranch the air is clean, the food is filling, and horses are tame.

A typical day on the dude ranch starts with a big breakfast, single-file horse ride, swimming, lunch, afternoon horse ride, fishing, dinner, and evening entertainment. The same entertainers circulate amoungst the ranches. There's cowboy singers, animal shows, ropers, etc. By 9pm the whole family is beat and ready to turn in.

We've been to three different dude ranches over the last three years, and each has its own pros and cons.

Dixie Dude Ranch has about 20 cabins are various sizes, most of which are quite rustic. Accomodations for us were a bit tight but bearable. Food is served in a dining room with four large picnic tables. The horses are pretty old but the guides are fun and interesting. This is the only ranch we've found that allows kids under 6 to ride with a parent.

The Flying L is a time-share community, so we go to visit this ranch basically for free in exchange to listening to their sales pitch. It has a mix of 1950s cabins and brand new condos. As part of the free deal, we were only allowed one horse ride, but it was a good one. The trails here were more interesting and you had to actually steer the horse. The best part about the Flying L was the waterpark and its lazy river. It also has a golf course and lots of activities. This is very commercialized, so you don't really feel you're on a ranch.

This year we just returned from the Mayan Ranch. This all-inclusive ranch serves beer and sodas all day, plus has a nice bar for the evenings. There are around 50 cabins as well as bunk houses yet the landscape still resembles a ranch. There's a hayride each morning taking visitors to a fantastic cowboy breakfast. Herds of deer have been trained to follow the hayriders, some getting within 10 yards. The horse rides are a bit boring (straight and flat), but you get two per day. Swimming in the pool and the Medina river is fun for the kids as was the nightly entertainment.

Traditional vs Roth 401K

My company just started offering a Roth 401k in addition to the traditional 401k. They allow any combination of the two up to the $16,500 annual contribution limit. (Matching always occurs in the pre-tax account.) So, which is better?

The conventional wisdom is that in most cases the Roth is better because the account can grow faster with after-tax dollars, especially if you are far from retirement. (Plus the Roth doesn't require minimum distributions, is easier on beneficiaries, and can be withdrawn early under certain circumstances.) If you invest the same amount in both accounts, the traditional 401K will be taxed on withdrawal so it will be smaller.

However, to be fair the money saved by using pre-tax dollars should be invested in a side account. If that tax savings (for example $16,500 x 25% = $4,125) is invested in a Roth IRA (so you don't have to pay taxes on the growth) and your marginal tax rate doesn't change between now and retirement, then they are equal.

Assuming you can afford to maximize your contributions, the ideal situation is to max out the Roth 401k ($16,500) and a Roth IRA ($6,000, or $12,000 for you and your spouse). Of course you're not elegible to contribute the maximum to a Roth IRA unless your AGI is less than $156,000. (Partial contributions are allowed up to $166,000.) Here's where things can get interesting.

Let's say your AGI is $156,500. If you choose the Roth 401k, then you are not eligible for a full Roth IRA contribution (because your AGI is over $156,000). However, if you split your retirement contribution into $500 for the traditional 401K and $16,000 for the Roth 401k, then your AGI is decreased by the amount of the traditional 401K such that now you can contribute the maximum to the Roth IRA.

So, the objective here is to use the traditional 401k to keep your AGI under $156,000 so you can maximize your contribution to the Roth IRA. If you do this right, you could potentially sock away up to $28,500 a year.

The best calculator I could find for comparisons is Bloomberg's. Note that the calculator offers to reinvest tax savings in a taxable account, not a Roth IRA. Play with the numbers and see what's best for your situation.

Dillo Race

This morning Zach ran the annual Dillo race for kids. He ran a mile in 9 minutes and 52 seconds. We had planned to train over the preceeding weeks, but there's been so much rain it was impossible. Nevertheless, it was a fun experience and I hope he'll do it again next year.

I took this picture with my iPhone at about the 3/4 mile point. It was lucky that the shot has the rising sun in the background so that the shadow clearly shows him floating above the ground in stride.

Where is David?

Notice the "Where is David" section on the left? That's a blog badge provided by TripIt, a pretty cool travel organizer. After looking at two other sites, I decided I liked TripIt because it was so easy to use. I just forward my e-mail travel confirmations and it keeps track of all my past and future travel. Then it will alert me before trips, offer weather reports, driving directions, etc. But for me the bigger attraction was the badge and the ability for my friends and family to know my plans. We're working on a page at work that tracks the team's whereabouts.

TripIt works with Linkedin, but it doesn't work with Facebook yet. Which brings me to two other tools I've been using recently.

At home I run Vista, so I've standardized on the Vista Gadgets. The library of gadgets is lacking today, but I expect it to get better in the future when Windows 7 removes the sidebar requirement. Regardless, I've been using the Vista Facebook gadget so I can see if I have pending email or noticiations on Facebook. Its using Facebook's Connect feature, which I'm seeing more of lately.

At work I've been trying to find good Adobe AIR widgets. I found one called AlertThingy2 that consolidates alerts from different services like Facebook and Twitter, along with RSS feeds. It gives me a realtime list of things going on across the Web.

And of course, all this software is free.

Backing up DVDs

My kids don't treat DVDs too well, so it pays to make backups. I'd never done it before so I set out to find free options. There's three steps in the process. First you need to copy the DVD, which may involve decrypting the copy protection. Second, you need to shrink the DVD content to fit back on a standard DVD. Third, you need to burn the new DVD.

Copy & Decrypt
For step one I found DVD43, but it doesn't work for Vista-64. (If you run XP it should work fine.) Instead I ended up using DVDFab. For a few bucks it automates the whole process, but I was looking for a free option. It will decrypt and copy the contents of a DVD to the harddrive for free, but everything else requires a paid upgrade. It even allows me to copy just the main movie, without all the commentary, camera angles, and extras. The output is a VIDEO_TS folder on your harddrive, which takes about 15 mins.

Shrink
I found that the VOBs that were copied were larger than the capacity of a standard DVD, so I found a program called DVDShrink. It takes the VIDEO_TS folder from the previous step, shrinks the content to fit on a standard DVD, and creates a new VIDEO_TS folder, all in about 15 mins.

Burn
The final step is to burn the VIDEO_TS folder and its contents to a DVD. For that I used CDBurnerXP but there are lots of other options out there as well. Again, it took about 15 mins recording at 12x.

Nothing fancy, but a good way to create a DVD backup in about an hour.

An Honest Restaurant

Check out the Heart Attack Grill. At least you know what you're getting.


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