To answer my own question, I played with it a little more, and somehow I got it working better. Not sure what I did though. It's good though, because I lowered my texting plan with ATT to 500 a month for $5, and I just use GV for most of my texting especially to friends and family to whom I text the most. I simply gave them my Google number so they now recognize me when I text; and they text back to that number. Of course it works for phone calls too, even outside wifi zones. So I was able to lower my plan to the lowest available, and have substantially reduced my monthly cell phone bill.
