Skype Success!

Hot news: we have successfully used Skype, and it is very cool! You may remember from my previous post about Skype that with this free software you can have free long distance conversations through your computer with other Skype users. With Skype you can also use your computer to call someone's phone. Normally there is a per minute charge for calling someone’s phone, but calls to phones are free until the end of the year. (I’m not sure if this free trial period applies to international calls.)

You can also have conference calls with up to five other Skype users. My brother David and I were chatting using Skype and then used Skype to call regular landline and cell phone numbers of other family members. The conferencing feature was very easy to use, and we were able to add regular phone users to our Skype conversation. (While the technical aspects of creating a conference call were simple, actually managing that many Lamberts talking all at once on the phone is another issue.)

If you are heavy into Skype you can also get the equivalent of a phone number so people can use a regular phone to call your computer. Naturally you can get voicemail on your computer to answer these calls when you are not online. There is a charge for both of these services.

Here are some of the things we learned in our adventures with Skype:

1) It's easy to setup and use.

2) The ringtone is great. Both David and I didn't want to pick up the call because listening to the ring tone was so much fun.

3) We had great clarity. Even my Dad, who is hard of hearing, had no trouble hearing me.

4) It didn't work when my parents had dial-up, but it works fine when we switched them to cable high speed access. (My sister Donna reported in her comment to a previous post that she also had trouble using it with dial-up.)

5) I used it with a $20 Radio Shack headset that I connect to my computer. I only needed the headset for the microphone; my laptop does not have a built-in microphone. The microphone on the headset could pick up Marty’s voice as well, and we were both able to participate in the conversation.

6) My parents used a ~$24 Skype-certified microphone from Radio Shack. This also allowed more than one person to participate in the conversation.

7) My former housemate, Ron, mentioned in a comment to a previous posting that he didn't feel comfortable with Skype because he didn't like talking to his computer. Both the microphones we used were good enough that you could move around the room and still be heard, so you didn't have to talk to the computer. (Plus it allows for multi-tasking, a Lambert compulsion.)

8) If the microphone is too close to the speakers, you get echoes.

9) Someone on an ordinary phone may need to turn up the volume on their phone in order to clearly hear a Skype call.

My nephew, Benjamin, reports that Vonage is better than Skype. I don’t know why. In any case, Skype seems fine for our needs.

I think Skype, like cell phones and blogs, demonstrates for us that the technical aspects of communicating in the twenty-first century are trivial. Anyone who has overheard cell phone conversations (or read this blog!) knows, however, that it’s not always clear that we actually have anything worthwhile to communicate. Unfortunately, Skype doesn't solve this problem.