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Tongya and a few other manufacturers from China and Taiwan make this generic-type USB handset for use with VoIP applications such as Skype.
Such handsets can be found very easily on eBay and other online stores, and they're a very cheap and practical way to have privacy combined with good voice quality in your IP calls.
The device is a just a basic handset, without a dial pad, and it connects to any self-powered USB port or hub in the computer. It does have, however, noise/echo cancellation circuitry.
No software is provided with the handset, meaning that the OS has to find the appropriate driver for itself.
Under Windows, automatic detection installs a C-Media USB audio driver.
Under SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal (my OS of choice) the device wasn't detected automatically, so I had to point YaST to a "Generic USB Audio" driver. That did the trick, the device was detected and after a reboot it was shown as "C-Media USB Audio". That leads me to believe support for USB handsets is already built into the 2.6.X kernel.
Then again, I'm a Linux newbie so don't take my word for it. Maybe this is a distro-specific thing.
Audio quality is excellent with no echo or distortions. I'm using the USB handset for Skype calls and I should say that's much better than using the regular microphone/speakers setup. Plus I can listen to CDs or watch movies while I talk on the phone.
One problem: sound levels are set to max (99) every time I reboot the system. I've been trying to fix this and make the system restore a comfortable volume level (14 in my experience) so far without success.
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