It gets better. This new PC, called Zonbu, from a new company of the same name, automatically receives free updates of its software when new versions come out. It doesn’t require antivirus or other security programs because it runs on the Linux operating system, which has attracted very few viruses or spyware programs. And it takes up almost no room — it’s a tiny little box.

Zonbu’s overall goal is to vastly simplify the process of buying and using a computer. The idea is to make it not only more affordable, but also much less of a hassle and much more energy efficient.

I’ve been testing the Zonbu, and it does work. Its software is still in beta, or test, mode until next month. But you can buy it right now at Zonbu.com with free software updates into the future. However, there’s a catch — several catches, in fact. Some have to do with the machine’s design and pricing, and others with its performance. Taken together, they prevent me from recommending this computer, despite its intriguing price and concept.

The biggest catch is that the Zonbu computer doesn’t include a hard disk for storing files (that’s one reason it uses so little energy). Instead, all of your files are stored online on the company’s servers. That offers several advantages, such as the fact that the files are automatically backed up.

But you have to pay for that online storage. In fact, to get the $99 price for the Zonbu computer, you have to commit to a two-year contract at prices ranging from $12.95 a month for a relatively small 25 gigabytes of storage to $19.95 a month for 100 gigabytes. If you opt to pay month to month instead of two years in advance, the Zonbu will cost you $249.

To get the Zonbu for $99 with 100 gig-abytes of storage, it will cost you $517.95 up-front after the discount of three free months that the company is currently offering. And the Zonbu doesn’t come with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, Wi-Fi adapter, speakers or DVD drive.

By comparison, you can get a Dell Inspiron 531s for just $529, after rebate. It has twice the memory, a DVD drive and a much better processor than the Zonbu. And it comes with a screen, keyboard, speakers and mouse — oh, and a 160-gigabyte hard disk that requires no monthly fee.

To be fair, the Dell doesn’t come with a full-fledged office productivity suite, while the Zonbu has OpenOffice, a competitor to Microsoft Office, preloaded. To get OpenOffice on the Dell, you must download and install it.

Also, the Zonbu monthly service fee is offset by some savings. The $99 machine uses so much less energy than a typical PC that the company claims you could save noticeably on your electric bill. And you might also save the cost of subscribing to security software updates.

Zonbu

Because the Zonbu stores your files on a remote server, you can also use them remotely, at no extra cost, from another Zonbu or from any Windows PC.

To speed things up — and guard against an Internet service outage — the built-in programs are stored locally on the computer, and Zonbu includes a small 4 gigabyte memory card in the machine to cache your documents. In my tests, this allowed me to keep using the Zonbu even when I unplugged it from the Internet.

In addition to OpenOffice, the Zonbu comes with the Firefox Web browser, an Outlook clone called Evolution, an iTunes clone called Banshee, the Skype Internet phone software, and a bunch of other programs for organizing photos, playing video and more. There are also some casual games.

To Zonbu’s credit, the machine is capable of recognizing lots of printers and digital cameras, out of the box. It worked well with my Kodak camera and Hewlett-Packard printer.

But there are three other big problems with the Zonbu, problems that belie its goal of eliminating hassles. First, you aren’t allowed to install any added software. You’re stuck with what the company provides. And that means, for instance, no video-editing software, for now at least.

Second, a lot of this Linux software is rough, below the polished level of Windows or Mac programs. In my tests, various programs crashed or froze frequently. While the Banshee program is supposed to work with iPods, it failed to work properly with both of the iPods I tested.

Finally, I found that the Zonbu crawled much of the time. Folders took forever to open, email took way too long to appear, and so forth. And I was testing it on a very fast Internet connection. This may be because of the very wimpy processor Zonbu uses to save money and energy.

I strongly support Zonbu’s goals of making computing simpler, cheaper and more energy efficient. But this product has too many compromises.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

But relatively few Americans have adopted these alternatives, which are called voice over Internet protocol services, or VOIP, for short. Some consumers avoid the move because VOIP services can’t connect to 911 emergency call centers in the traditional manner, and must use workarounds. Others worry that if their Internet service goes out, so does their phone service.

In addition, the stability of the VOIP providers isn’t certain. Vonage itself has been battered by legal problems and another VOIP service, SunRocket, shut down this week.

I’ve been testing a new type of VOIP option that will go on sale in September from a Silicon Valley start-up called Ooma, whose product goes by the same name. It differs radically from Vonage and other current VOIP providers, in two ways.

First, Ooma is a $399 piece of hardware that you pay for only once. There are no monthly bills. You just buy an Ooma Hub, a small device that looks like an answering machine. You plug it into your Internet connection and attach a phone, and you get free, unlimited domestic calls, local or long distance, as long as you keep your Ooma.

Second, with Ooma, you can easily keep your regular phone service as an integrated backup, for 911 calls, and in case the Internet service in your home goes out.

Ooma combines the VOIP and regular phone service. If you keep your standard phone service, Ooma uses your current phone number. And, if you dial 911, it always places that call over the traditional phone network. During an Internet outage, the device seamlessly switches to use the regular phone service, but you still pay no fees to Ooma.

If you do keep your standard service, you can reduce it to a very basic, low-cost plan, just for 911 and backup. International calls are routed through the Internet by Ooma and the company says they will cost roughly what Internet phone services like Skype charge for nonmember calls, which is well below traditional landline rates.

Ooma also delivers some added benefits. It gives you a virtual second line. If a call comes in when you are already on the line, the second call can be answered from another extension. It also has a built-in answering machine, and allows you to check your messages and call logs online.

I’ve been testing Ooma in my home for about a week and, except for a problem on one phone jack, I found it worked as promised. I tested it with both corded and cordless phones, and I also tested a companion $39 device, called an Ooma Scout, which must be plugged into the phone jacks in your house you want to use, beyond the jack to which the Hub is connected. Each scenario worked well.

When I plugged my cordless-phone base station into an Ooma box, all of the remote handsets continued to work normally. The only difference was the dial tone; Ooma gives you a unique musical dial tone to tell you it’s on duty.

Ooma works using the peer-to-peer Internet system popularized by file-sharing sites. Each Ooma box is part of Ooma’s network. The box in your home, for instance, might carry someone else’s phone call, though you can’t hear that call, and this doesn’t interfere with your own ability to make and receive calls whenever you want. In my tests, the Ooma didn’t seem to affect the speed of the Internet connection used by our computers.

To build its network, Ooma will be seeding the country with 1,500 boxes over the summer. These will be provided free of charge. But the only way to get one, if you aren’t on the initial list, is to know somebody who has one. Each recipient gets three tokens — redeemable for a free Ooma — to give to others.

Set-up is relatively straightforward and the manual is clear, assuming you have standard cable modem or DSL Internet service.

I did run into one problem. When I plugged my cordless-phone base station into an Ooma Scout, outgoing calls worked OK, but incoming calls wouldn’t work properly. This problem cleared up when I moved the base station to a different phone jack, but it suggests that, at least on some jacks, Ooma may fail.

The Ooma devices can be constantly updated over the network to fix problems and add capabilities, and the company is planning to add more features and options, some of which may cost money.

Of course, there is no guarantee that Ooma can handle a large number of customers as well as it did my test unit. But Ooma may be a good option for people who want to cut their phone bills, and either aren’t worried about 911 and Internet outages, or are willing to keep a basic, low-price standard phone service to cover those contingencies.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Still, for all its success, Skype has been a niche product, little used by mainstream, non-techie consumers. Much less popular in the U.S. than in Europe, it has mainly appealed here to budget-conscious folks like students and recent immigrants, who often want to make lots of international phone calls.

There are two big reasons for Skype’s niche status. First, many computers aren’t equipped with microphones. Most modern laptops come with built-in mikes, but the vast majority of PCs are still desktops, which typically lack mikes. Second, even when computers have mikes, they make clumsy telephones when compared with real phones, which are specifically designed for voice communication.

In addition, free Skype calls can be made only to other Skype users. If you want to call nonmembers who use real phones, you have to sign up for a prepaid service called SkypeOut, although, at two cents a minute, the calls are cheap.

Now, however, Skype is putting those hurdles behind it. Today, the company plans to release a major new version of its phone-calling software, Skype 2.0, with added features — including video calling — and a cleaner interface. It is taking steps to make computer microphones cheap and easy to obtain. More importantly, it is moving its service off the computer to a new breed of Internet-based telephone handsets.

I’ve been testing Skype 2.0, along with the new, cheap, Skype-branded microphones and a new Skype-compatible phone that frees users from sitting in front of a computer while talking. Despite some flaws, this new combination of hardware and software generally worked well, and I believe it stands a chance of propelling Skype into the mainstream.

There’s nothing new about using a computer as a phone. And free computer-to-computer phone calls, among fellow users of a service, are also common now. America Online, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple Computer, Google and others have offered this service for a while. Most also already offer free video calls — something Skype is just now adding — for users with Web cameras.

But Skype is the company most identified with free Internet phone calls, and it is trying hard to keep that status. The new Skype 2.0, available at Skype.com, is ready now for Windows and will soon be released for the Macintosh and other platforms.

In my tests of Skype 2.0, I used two different Windows computers to place voice calls to Skype users in California, New York and Berlin, Germany. I also made a couple of SkypeOut calls to phones in the Washington, D.C., area.

The new Skype software was easy to use. It searches for people you know to see if they are registered members, and it lets you add them to your contact list with one click.

All my test calls were very clear, though in most cases there was a slight problem in the first few seconds, when callers couldn’t hear me. In a couple of cases, the sound dropped out briefly during a call. And Skype disconnected my call to Berlin in the middle, forcing me to redial. Still, as a tradeoff for free calls, the glitches were tolerable.

I used a variety of microphones, built-in and added-on, cheap and expensive. In general, the built-in and costlier add-on mikes worked best. Skype’s new cheap mike, which comes with an earbud as part of a $4.99 Skype “starter pack” available at RadioShack stores, was a little muffled unless I held it close to my mouth.

I also made a few video calls, using a Logitech Web camera. These worked fine, though they displayed the graininess that marks most Web video calling. An audio conference call also worked well, though you can’t use video if you’re calling more than one person. Skype also offers a conventional text-based chat system and a feature for transferring files. I tested both, and they worked fine.

But I was most impressed with the new Skype phone I tested, the $100 Linksys CIT200. It looks and works like a regular cordless phone. But it links wirelessly to a little base station that connects to your computer. And it has a big Skype button that connects you to the Skype service via the PC. The phone displays your Skype contacts, and you call them with the press of a button. You can also make calls to non-Skype phones, via SkypeOut.

I tested the phone by calling both Skype users and non-Skype users, and it worked great everywhere in and around my home — upstairs, downstairs, even outside in the yard.

There are other phones that can now use Skype, ranging from a $16 handset that connects to the PC with a cable to a $100 cellphone-style wireless headset and a $140 cordless phone that can use both Skype and your regular phone service to place calls. All of them liberate Skype users from the PC.

Skype has escaped from its niche and is heading for the mainstream. You might want to give it a try.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com.