This article will limit itself to explaining how to install and uninstall the program. The guide also provides its own pragmatic tutorial, Using WengoPhone.

WengoPhone may not be your favourite choice of voice communications client. Fortunately, there are alternatives. The guide lists a few here, but makes no judgements, as it is impossible to analyse all of them in depth.

The Wikipedia also provides a comparison list of VoIP software, including softphone clients.

The OpenWengo web site, http://www.openwengo.org/, provides immediate download links for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. I chose the latest Windows version, 2.1.1, which, as for all downloads in the guide, I saved in the downloads folder, creating a www.openwengo.org sub folder. Use Windows Explorer to open this sub folder, then double click on the WengoPhone-2.1.1.exe file and you will see the following dialog:

The default selection of English is fine for me, but you may prefer to change this. Now click on OK.

Click on Next >.

Click on I Agree.

The default directory is perfectly acceptable, so click on Install. At this point the installation process starts, showing a progress dialog, and takes just a couple of minutes. When completed, you will see:

Click on Finish to terminate the installation process. If you leave the “Run WengoPhone...” box checked, as above, WengoPhone will be started for you.

The first time you use the program, the connection wizard will ask you for your VoIP account. If you don't already have one, then you'll need to click on the message “You don't have any account? ...”.

This will open the WengoPhone web site, where you can create your account, at no cost:

You will need to supply a nickname, password, and a valid e-mail address – this is used later to send a confirmation e-mail. To avoid mass registration by software, you'll also need to type in the characters shown in the picture. Of course, as with any contract, you should read the terms and conditions before checking the “I have read and accept...” box. Now click on the “continue” button. The web site will then display the following:

The warning box has a link “click here” which you will need to click on in order to receive a confirmation e-mail. This may take a few minutes, so be patient. The e-mail, as shown below, provides an activation link, which you should then click on.

At this point your browser should display the activation web page, thus:

Now you can continue with the connection wizard, which we left temporarily suspended, as shown below:

Make sure that the “Wengo account” button is set, then click on Next. You don't have to insert your Wengo account information, because this is taken care of for you by the wizard. At this point, WengoPhone will attempt to log you in, so make sure that you are connected to the Internet:

Once WengoPhone has logged you in, the main Home tab is displayed:

All you need now is someone to call. Before you start looking up your friends and colleagues, you can make a couple of test calls. Click on the “Dialpad” tab, dial 333 then click on the green telephone icon. This tests the audio system. After a short message, you can speak to the server, which then relays back your voice with a short time delay. When you've adjusted the volume settings, hang up by clicking on the red telephone icon. If you also have a web camera, then you can check the video system by dialing 334, again after a short message you web camera's video image will be relayed back to you.

Now you're ready for the guide's pragmatic tutorial in the Using WengoPhone article.

WengoPhone provides uninstall commands directly from the programs menu. Click on Start, then Programs, WengoPhone, and then Uninstall, as shown below:

The WengoPhone uninstall dialog will then appear:

Click on Uninstall to start the process. It only takes a couple of minutes to complete, at which point you will see:

Click on Finish to terminate the uninstall process.