Cool Tech
Skype rules
I've been hearing more and more about Skype and so far I've not heard anything negative about it. So, I decided to go purchase a decent USB microphone and give it a whirl. Wow! I'm impressed in a big way.
Skype is a VOIP (Voice over IP) application that allows you to use the Internet as a phone. Skype allows anyone with a net connection to make free calls to other people using Skype. The other (money making) portion of Skype is where people purchase SkypeOut credits (in 10 euro increments) that allow you to call just about anyplace in the world using Skype. The rates differ a bit where you call to -- a landline in Germany is a lot cheaper than a mobile line in Germany.
After making a few calls (some land lines, some mobile) to Germany and being surprised by the clarity and lack of noticeable latency, I was left with 8.67 Euro worth of credit. Way cool!
So, if you have friends around the world you'd like to call without getting reamed by rip-off telcos or rip-off phone cards with service fees and expiration dates, Skype is a good way of doing it. And if the people on the other end have a decent net connection, you can skip the middleman and pay nothing.
Interested? Go to Skype and download a client -- all major OSes (including various flavors of Linux) are supported -- and then dial me up -- my name is (unsurprisingly) mayhemchaos !
Posted by Mayhem at September 16, 2004 12:50 PM
Carol and I used skype when we first started dating because we had different cell providers at the time and we were getting some outrageous cell bills. I found it worked pretty well, but not without some drop-outs and some echoing here and there (I was on DSL and she on Cable). Of course, that was several months ago, and it may have improved -and sounds like it has. When I was trying it, they hadn't yet put out the ability to dial a non-IP user, so I imagine they have made some improvements. But, I thought the concept was awesome, and it was still WAY better than voice via yahoo chat or the like.
