Help me, help me.
My USB headset is rubbish. Absolutely dire. It’s made by Gigaware and, if memory serves, I bought it for an outrageous price from one of those airport shops when I was on my way to America. You know when you pay something like £50 for bits of plastic that you know must have been manufactured for pennies? That’s how I felt. But I needed to have a headset as I had several important Skype conferences planned. Plus I didn’t want to rely on the MacBook’s own internal microphone as that can be a bit echoy.
The Gigaware headset, complete with rough plastic ear-muff things and boom mic has been with me for about 2 years now.
I need to do something about it.
When I use it, my Skype calls are fine for about 40-50 minutes before the headset just screws up. Literally it goes haywire and people can’t hear me. It’s like a build-up of static or something. So routinely, when I’ve been talking on Skype for more than 35 minutes I have to apologise to all concerned and briefly take the headset’s USB plug out… wait 5 seconds… plug it back in again and proceed as normal. To avoid this build up of… something.
I don’t know WHY I haven’t done something about this.
So.
Please help me out.
What’s the best USB headset you can buy?
Have you experimented with Bluetooth or infrared/wireless ones?
What do you recommend?
[Update: I found the exact headset model I’ve got. Must have bought it from Radioshack. $29 it says on their site. I’m sure it was more. Either way, I’m not a big fan.]
Ewan: I’ve heard lots of good things about the Freetalk Everyman headsets. They’re sold on the Skype website, so Skype thinks highly of them as well.
Have a great weekend.
MS
those Everyman ones are the dogs
Nice one Michael!
I’m going to take a close look at them. Quite like the look of the wireless
ones:
http://shop.skype.com/headsets/wireless/iss-talk-5195-everyman-wireless/
I only do occasional skype calls, and mostly use them for tunes, but my Nokia BH-501’s work well for me (Bluetooth). There’s a newer in-ear model available I think.
Jim, I’ll have a look at that, thank you!
Jim, I’ll have a look at that, thank you!
Just had a thought: that ‘static build-up’ – you don’t happen to be using a Mac, do you? A colleague has that self-same problem when he Skypes on a Mac using a Plantronics USB headset . . .
Nice one Mighty
Oh no… so it’s not actually a problem with the Gigaware headset?
Well, I wonder if it’s related to using a USB dongle connected headset with a Mac. One suspects a problem with the drivers for the USB. My colleague assumed it was the dongle – the headset works fine when connectd via the headset/mic sockets (I believe).
maybe I should get a headset that uses those sockets rather than USB… I’m
sure I’ve had other USB headsets that worked fine with the Mac though
Maybe. But it is time/usage related and it seems to be related to use of the mic. I’ll see what I can find out as our afflicted here is the Engineering Director!
Ah very useful!
I’ve got a wired Everyman and I love it!
I bought an external USB soundcard, that means I can use any headset I fancy – in my case http://steelseries.com/products/audio/steelseries-7h-usb or http://steelseries.com/products/audio/steelseries-siberia-v2-usb whihc both come with usb soundcards.
Just a thought
Do you use a mac or a PC?
Right I will check those out too!
Work machine is a Mac (17 inch MacBook Pro), and I’ve got a Windows 7 running netbook (Lenovo X100e) I use when traveling both on business trips and for pleasure.
And do you get this static build up after about forty minutes?
To be honest I can’t remember the last time I made a phone call, Skype, cellular, or land line, that’s lasted more than 10 minutes.
Well that’s still good feedback stefan thank you
You have made me think why I bother with calls longer than ten minutes
have you thought about bluetooth?
I’m not adverse to it but I was thinking of a wired solution.what do you
have in mind?
Plantronics 995. Comfortable, good quality audio for music and calls. Wireless (via USB dongle) – @planetf1
Plantronics 995. Comfortable, good quality audio for music and calls. Wireless (via USB dongle)
Nice one Nigel!
You might want to check the Jabra Go 660 wireless headset with link 320 for your mobile and pc…
I will have a look thanks!
I literally stand corrected!
Link broken, dodgy website anyway.
Not so much dodgy website as fussy – try http://www.best4headsets.co.uk
I’m sorry but I don’t trust you.
What’s to trust? It’s a link to a commercial website. Oh well, please yourself.