Free Calls With Skype

I really like Skype. But be prepared for frequent cut outs during conversations. It happens almost every time. I notice it happens more to me, the Skype user, than to the person I am talking to.

I have dialup and can't use Skype, Gizmo, or any of the others. What I use is Yahoo Messenger to place calls to land lines. Remember years ago when you could do it for free? It used to behave like your talking on a CB radio! Well they improved the software from back then and it now works better than any of the messengers I have tried recently for dialup and is pretty dang cheep, about 2 cents a minute. Just don't be surfing the web or making any downloads! If you know of a better one for dialup let me know cause I will be monitoring this post.

An English friend of mine who now lives in the US talked me into trying Skype. He's been using it for quite some time and makes numerous calls to his family and friends across the Atlantic. I was impressed with what I saw so, for Christmas, I purchased a Skype phone and inexpensive Logitech camera for my son and his family who live in Iowa. The two pieces cost less than $50. At the same time, I bought an identical set for me. Since then, we've been having weekly video chats without cost from PA to Iowa and can keep pace with his growing family.

I'm from the UK but work overseas, so bought one of these, a cordless USB phone for just under GBP 30...
http://www.tescointernetphone.com/

This gave me a free incoming UK number, no monthly charges. Only have to pay for outgoing calls to 'normal' phones (mostly 2p per minute) & has free voicemail when offline.

I've found Skype PC-to-PC calls audio to be quite satisfactory, but Outgoing PC-to-phone calls audio quality to be quite poor. (And these calls are charged per minute, not free.) Not network loss/latency/jitter problems, but extreme high-end rolloff ("muffled"), etc. It's bad enough that some people I've called can't recognize my voice.

Yes, I've walked through all the suggested PC configuration settings per the Skype FAQs. I'm using DSL, and again, the PC-to-PC calls are fine. Am I the only one experiencing this phenomenon on Skype Out calls?

I am very surprised that you do not mention any security concerns in this article. See what I have collected from various Internet sources in my own
Skype recommendations page at: http://www.boku.ac.at/zid-skype.html?&L=1

For home users who are behind a firewalled broadband router, voice quality improves dramatically, if both the parties open a port (port forwarding) and get their Skype to listen on it.

Some of us working in China get very frustrated when we punch in skype.com and get re-routed to an all-Chinese Web site, then would have to download a quite-possibly tampered version of SKYPE. One way to get around this is go to http://www.skype.com/useskype/ Usually, one way to go around this kind of situation, as it also happens with MSN and others, is to find a sub-link inside the destination site. The above link, "low per-minute rates" http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/all_rates.html , Was the only one that worked for me. Great job, Bob!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Wow, I knew China was blocking certain search engines, but I didn't know they were redirecting sites like that. No way I would recommend downloading a "Beijing approved" version of anything!

For free PC to PC calls and calls to land lines even cheaper than Skype, I use Freecall (freecall.com) and the quality is excellent.

And then there's Magicjack: land line to land line via caller's Magicjack device linked to his land line phone and his PC. Modest annual cost and free calling.