Skype?

[Jonzjob]

Anyone out there heard of 'Skype'?

I had an e-mail from Dabs the other day and they are advertising this 'new' phone method called Skype. It uses ADSL connections and apparently you can make free calls to anyone anywhere in the world, as long as they are on line and have ADSL. You can find out if the person you want to talk to is on line and off you go. It will allow conference calls to upto 5 people too.

The only down side is that both you and the person you are calling have to have ADSL and have to be online. I suppose that with ADSL you can be online all the time anyway. Still sounds a cheep way of phoning. I still use my internet phone, it 'ain't so cheep (3.3 pence/min international) but I can phone a real phone and only I have to be on line. As we have ADSL I can even phone myself . I'm not sure I understand this new fangled technology yet?

John.

[Domi]

You do not need ADSL to use skype, as it works quite well with an ordinary dial-up line. In fact the advantage of skype over similar type of programs is that it has been kept quite simple and will normally work behind firewalls and with ordinary telephone lines.

Obviously you both need to be online, but if you download skype (the program) and keep it active (e.g. you will see the skype icon at the bottom of your screen) the person who is not always connected can "phone" you (it actually sounds like an old-fashioned telephone ring)

I used it to speak to my brother in France when we both had a dial-up line and the quality was usually very good.

You need a headset, but these are now quite cheap.

you can get more detais on www.skype.com

Domi

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I've been using Skype for several months now over ADSL with no problems. The advantage of being on ADSL is that the connection's always on and assuming it's loaded up your contacts can call you anytime.

It has been in "beta" test for some time, and thus entirely free, but the full version is now released (1.0) and so they're now looking to make money from it.  How they are now paying for the software is by offering a pay service where you can call regular phone numbers via Skype. It appears connections between on-line Skype users are still free. Check the web site for details. http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/

[Jonzjob]

Thanks for the gen folks.

I will investigate this further as my son-in-law is a great one for being on line with a dial-up line and it's alkward to phone him a lot of the time. So if he loaded it too then that negates the problem. Looking at Skypeout it looks even cheaper than the internet phone I've got now, so that looks worth investigating too.

John.

[Humptydingo]

Don't forget a microphone too.  Great free service, I speak to my stepson in UK regularly who watches the pennies.  Could be a good chatline to those seeking friends around the world - I'm not into that sort of thing personally but you can also communicate via the keyboard on-line too.