rowan.bradley

I've imported my whole Outlook address book into Express Talk. This is probably over 1000 addresses (many of whom have no phone number - just an e-mail address). This makes Express Talk extremely slow. In particular it takes many seconds to drop down the list of recent incoming and outgoing numbers when you click the little down-arrow, which means that it takes ages to even see the number whose call you just missed, or do "last number redial". This seems a severe weakness of Express Talk - presumably it needs a better way of storing or indexing the address book. Actually of course, what I've done is going to give me a bad maintenance problem, since I will have to (a) remember not to put any original information in Express Talk's address book, but always put it in Outlook, and ( I'll have to frequently re-import it into Express Talk. It would be better really if there could be a bidirectional synchronisation feature, or if Express Talk could use the Outlook address book in situ. Can any of these things be done? Thanks - Rowan

I'm using the free version of Express Talk for Windows. It all worked fine for a while, but now something has gone wrong. If someone calls me, and I click the green phone icon (or press F10 which I have set up to answer incoming calls) it appears to connect, and I can hear the calling party, but he can't hear me at all. Needless to say, he assumes that I'm not there and soon rings off. If I make outgoing calls, everything is fine and both ends can hear, so my basic setup must be working OK. What's likely to be the cause and the cure for this? Thanks - Rowan

I'm using the free version of Express Talk. In general I like it, but I can't find out how easily to view a list of recent incoming and outgoing calls, with their numbers when available. In particular, I find it infuriating that if I receive an incoming call, but don't answer it quickly enough (usually because I'm running up the stairs to where my computer is, or fumbling to plug my headset into the fiddly little sockets and get it on my head), I can't find out who just rang me so I can ring them back. My mobile phone shows me a list of incoming, outgoing and missed calls, in reverse order, with their times and dates, with their numbers (or names if they are in my address book) - why can't Express Talk do the same thing? Bizarrely the log file shows the missed call but not its number. Numbers mysteriously appear in the drop-down list near the top of the Express Talk window, but with no annotation so I don't know where these numbers came from or when I called them or they called me. Am I missing some feature? If not, does anyone know of a free SIP phone application which does have this feature? Thanks - Rowan

Just getting started with ExpressTalk Basic. I seem to be able to dial a number by bringing ExpressTalk to the front and then typing the number on the computer's numeric keypad and hitting Enter to dial. But I can't find an equivalent key to hang up. Is there one? And is there a key that will pick up an incoming call? It's much quicker to hit a key than mess about with a mouse, especially if I have just run up the stairs, and I've only got four rings to answer before it goes to voicemail (I've got this set short since it's the last in a chain of forward-on-no-reply). Thanks - Rowan

I've just bought a new Dell computer running Vista, and downloaded RecordPad, and I'm new to computer sound recording, so everything is new to me. I'm trying to record a cassette that I'm playing on a high quality Sony cassette deck, connected to the Line In port on the Dell PC. I'm finding that the volume of sound seems far too high - the record level bars are way up to the top of the red, even when I've got the level of the Line In levels turned down to zero in the Sound control panel. Also I find that adjusting the levels in RecordPad seemed to make no difference to the level recorded, nor to the level indicated on the level bar display. Is this what's meant to happen? Lastly, I'd like to be able to monitor what's being recorded on headphones or speakers while it's recording - is there a way of doing this? Many thanks for your help - Rowan