Link to PC Magazine From PC Magazine / May 25, 2000, By Les Freed

Simple to use and a great bargain to boot, dialpad.com is a Web-based telephone service that lets you call any phone in the U.S. for absolutely no charge. There's no software to buy: You just download a free 170K Java applet (for Windows 95, 98, and NT only) when you sign up for a dialpad.com account. In return for free phone calls, you agree to receive promotional e-mail from dialpad.com and its affiliates. You'll also see some banner ads on the dialer interface, but they aren't too much of a nuisance. And fortunately, the Java applet is cached, so you won't have to download it each time you make calls.

To use the service, you simply enter a phone number, click Dial, and then talk all you want. Dialpad.com's only downside is that its voice quality can vary widely. At best-which was most of the time-it's like talking on a cell phone; at worst, it's barely intelligible. We got acceptable sound quality from a hotel room dial-up connection at only 26.4 Kbps, and we occasionally got awful quality connected on a 1.5-Mbps DSL link. During peak times, we often had trouble connecting to dialpad.com's site; surprisingly, the peak times seemed to be nights and weekends, when conventional phone rates are lowest. Altogether, though, the few low-quality calls we experienced on dialpad.com were a small price to pay for the value and convenience of this terrific service.

www.dialpad.com