[scottallison]

Google Voice is a great product which could be so much better, it's pretty clear it's one of those things Google has not looked after or worked on much. It's also a complete pain to set up. Your average Joe is going to struggle to get it up and running and nicely integrated with Gmail. I've watched two reasonably techie people struggle to work out to make/receive calls inside of Gmail.

Note that if you struggle with cell reception and want to make calls over wifi then T-Mobile's UMA service - they call it "Wifi Calling" - is a good solid solution which just uses wifi as an alternate bearer for all your phone's usual capability. (voice, text, data)