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Skype VoIP Software & Service Reviewed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the skype-ripe-for-hype dept.

securitas writes "The Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows reviews Skype VoIP software and the SkypeOut paid Internet telephony service in today's New York Times. Fallows almost raves about the software and service, writing, 'Skype, a made-up term that rhymes with "tripe," is the most popular and sexiest application of VoIP'. But he acknowledges that 'There is one huge drawback: Skype works best from a fully connected computer, which runs counter to the whole trend of ever more mobile communication.' Fallows interviewed Skype's CEO Niklas Zennstrom, who discussed company plans for 'partnerships with manufacturers of cellphones and personal digital assistants,' to address Skype's mobile limitations - it's currently restricted to Pocket PC. Fallows concludes with a provocative thought about Internet telephony when he writes, 'there are also questions about whether this new form of instant access could become as oppressively intrusive as e-mail often seems.' (Mirror at Taipei Times). Slashdot previously covered reviews of VoIP services Vonage, Packet8 and VoicePulse and profiled Skype."

3 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. My experiences with Skype... by wviperw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Well, a friend and I decided that since Doom 3 doesn't have coop, we'd effectively create our own using VoIP. Quite surprisingly, this was more fun than I could have imagined. Talking to a friend vocally whilst navigating the same dark corners and running into the same ugly creatures creates a better coop experience than you might think. Voice quality was very good, even when being played on the same channel/s as the Doom 3 audio. The only problem we ran into was stuttering of the vocal channel in Skype as a result of my friend using BitTorrent in the background (any sort of mild uploading seems to cause issues with Skype).

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    Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
  2. Rhyme by 1gor · · Score: 5, Funny

    'Skype, a made-up term that rhymes with "tripe,"

    It rhymes with 'hype' much better.

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  3. Skype is nice. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It Just Works. Linux, PCs, Mac. Qt 3.3 limitation, tho.

    I'm guessing "SkypeIn" will be available before long, allowing POTS to call a number assigned to you, representing your PC, and if you are not online do the "answering machine thing". Maybe $7.99 a month?

    They also have an "Echo Test Service" user that you can fool with while testing the stuff, and lots of help forums.

    Also instant messaging...

    For all the people against closed source, all I can say is "the gaim people will be licking their chops" to get to sniffin'.

    There seems to be a lot of anger toward Skype, but even tho it is closed source, most open source projects could learn a lot from how they did their project. I say this because I tried using three VOIP libraries/clients over the last few months and none of them worked. Out of date howtos, difficult to find help without endless we searches to dead links--you know the routine.

    Here is the place I usually get blasted and whiners say "what do you expect for free, skype had all that kazaa money, so they can do better, you shouldn't complain about free software it's wrong, etc". Yeah, well, if I'm not allowed to use free speech to complain about FSF/GNU software (because it's free?!?!) well screw it I like Skype.

    Skype just works.