[NTLUG:Discuss] Point to Point internet phone project

[. Daniel]

There are countless ways to do this I am sure, but I will sketch out what I 
hope to be able to do and the circumstances under which I hope to do this:

1. My wife's family is in Japan.  Her mother and father are not tech savvy 
but they do have a broadband connection.
2. Memory Kings in Carrollton has a pretty nice deal on these compact sized 
Dell machines for about $250 or less, so I want to pick up a couple of 
those.  (Plenty powerful with at least 2.4GHz processor and expandable to 
2GB though the first one I got came with 256MB)  That form factor precludes 
most PCI or other adapter cards, however, since it has two half-height 
slots.
3. I'll likely be in Japan some time in November so that's where my time 
line is for creating these two communicator PCs.  My son is expected 
mid-August but I don't want to take a newborn overseas too soon.
4. I'd like to install a computer and some sort of phone (preferably a POTS 
type) that will allow for phone calls between my home and theirs with no 
need nor intention to connect to any other service or provider.
5. Expanding beyond this to do things like send pictures or whatever is all 
secondary though it would be a pretty neat thing as well.
6. The user interface should be a simple as humanly possible, preferably 
not using a keyboard or video display.

So now I pose the question.  Given the information above, what ideas come 
to mind about how this could be accomplished?