A Software Nightmare

Many of you may have heard of X-Lite, a very common and arguably the most full-featured softphone around. This is a free application that supports SIP telephony and essentially allows you to register to your SIP provider and place calls to other people over your internet connection.

X-Lite is developed by CounterPath Corp., that also develops commercial high-end softphone applications, namely eyeBeam, a more powerful SIP phone with optional support for video conferencing and Bria, a recent addition that does away with the traditional keypad based interface and adopts a contact-list interface ala most Instant Messaging applications.

My first encounter with X-Lite was in 2003. I installed it on my Mac boxes and was very quickly dismayed by its horrible performance, kludgy interface and complete disregard to the Apple UI Guidelines; the application has its own skinned UI, evidently designed by people with minimal interest in usability, but was — and remains — the most full featured SIP softphone on the market. It was also free.
»