I got my Google Voice invite a few weeks ago, but only got my account set up last week. I was hemming and hawing about the area code I wanted and just did not decide for several days. When I went back in to check on it, they had added Washington, DC so I went ahead and got one of the numbers they had available.
I have to say that it’s pretty neat. Being able to screen my calls is a great feature. It’s like having a robot receptionist. If I don’t want to take the call, I don’t have to. And they are even screened for me. It’s nice having all of my phones called at once, since I generally only have immediate access to one of them at a time.
I gave the number to my mother and had her leave a message. So far, in my extensive tests, the voice transcription has a 100% rate of success. This is for the one voicemail that she has left for me. Also nice is the ability to log in to voice.google.com and just read the text of the voicemail or play it back.
Overall, very cool and interesting, but I am hesitant to throw myself fully into using the new number as the primary method of contacting me. I know that limits its usefulness, but getting everyone to change to a new number is something that I am not ready to do at the moment.
In the meanwhile, I am content to use it with a select group of people as a test of the technology.