Skype

[Diamondback Jay]

Does anyone know what this is? Can people call you on it?

 

[FArting]

The people who created Kazaa came up with Skype. If I were to call someone else who has Skype then it would be free. You call them using your microphone.

 

[Ryanwb]

Yeah you have to have the hardware for it (usually a USB phone).

It's has a proprietary protocol that doesn't follow the VoIP standard which is really, really stupid. I've heard that if you don't know what you're doing you can inadvertently become a super node with people piggy backing off your connection and basically bring your internet connection down to a crawl

Also it doesn't support Windows Vista and they haven't even said they plan on doing it.

If you want VoIP I would pick this as a last, last resort

 

[SweetD]

Packet8 has a realy cheap and effective VOIP phone system. I am moving the business to Microsofts VOIP server.

 

[nathan]

I think Jay just wants to use this for his radio show. Minimum hardware is going to be headphones+microphone.

It's free if you want to call other people using Skype.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Yeah you have to have the hardware for it (usually a USB phone).

It's has a proprietary protocol that doesn't follow the VoIP standard which is really, really stupid. I've heard that if you don't know what you're doing you can inadvertently become a super node with people piggy backing off your connection and basically bring your internet connection down to a crawl

Also it doesn't support Windows Vista and they haven't even said they plan on doing it.

If you want VoIP I would pick this as a last, last resort

I currently use Skype for all of my outbound calls, using only a standard PC microphone. You can call other skype users for free, like Nathan said, but most IM programs can do the same thing now.

Skype outbound phone calls used to be free, but this year they started charging. I paid $15 to be able to make unlimited calls from my computer to anywhere in the US and Canada for an entire year.