I "heart" AIM Phoneline-but not Skype, Yahoo Voice or Vonage softphone

Over the last few days I have been conducting several conversations over AOL's AIM Phoneline, Yahoo! Voice, Skype, and even my Vonage softphone.

Bug report:

Vonage Softphone cuts in and out. And I am running it on a new Media Center PC. Not only that, but my Vonage Softphone goes to voice mail on first ring, even though I have set it to kick over to VM after 45 seconds. 30 seconds didn't work for me, either. And when I disabled VM, callers were kicked over to a busy signal.

Yahoo! Voice is generally pretty OK, but one of yesterday's converses- one with an old girlfriend 2,400 miles away who really needed consolation- sounded like it was in a fish tank. And I am tired off all those pop-ups, mail alerts and  interruptions when I am on Yahoo! Voice.

Something is up with my SkypeOut. I see Chinese characters and lots of squares in the icons and feature listings. Yea, yea, removed Skype via Add/Remove Programs, reinstalled and still the squares are there. I don't even know how to use chopsticks, not to mention being able to read Mandarin. 

But AIM Phoneline works like a charm. Easy, intuitive interface. Clear voice quality. Intuitive calling interface and voice controls.

No muss, no fuss. Works for Russ. 

Full disclosure: My BlackBerry blog BBHub's publisher is owned by AOL- which also owns AIM (once more commonly known as AOL Instant Messenger).