Skype is a VoIP phone system.
I have tried to do some research on this and am finding vastly different opinions. Some say it is great. Some say it is a bargain. Others say they nail you with hidden fees and yet others claim it flat out sucks.
So I figured I’d ask those who I can trust. Any opinions on this? Personal experience?
I use it once in a while. I used to use it all the time but sometimes - something like one out of 5 calls - the lag would make calls almost impossible to maintain (this only happened when calling or being called by cell phones).
If you mostly use it to call other skype numbers it’s very good, with crystal clear sound and no lag.
And it is a bargain, your money last longer considering that Skype-to-Skype calls are free.
I don’t see how people were getting ripped off. Skype, for me, has always seemed to be pretty straight-forward. You put money in your account and calls take that money away. Different countries cost different amounts. Be careful when calling mobile phones in other countries because most of them don’t pay for incoming calls, meaning you’ll pay a premium.
Skype to Skype is perfect and is what I think all telephony should strive to today. Voice quality has gotten worse it seems, rather than better.
We’ve been using it for a few months to do video chats with my in-laws, who live about 3 hours away, so they can see their grandchild. For that purpose, Skype-to-Skype, it works really well, much better than the clients in MSN and AIM and the like, which we never could get working properly. Never used it as a replacement for a regular phone, though.
I’ve used Skype for about a year and a half now as a business phone #. I even have a little Skype phone that connects directly to my router so I don’t have to use a computer. My husband and I used Skype exclusively when we were staying in a rental home for 3 months - we moved in and discovered our cell phones, which are our primary business lines, had no coverage in the house we had rented. Skype saved our asses in that situation.
Plain ol’ Skype is free. You pay extra for the ability to have a real phone # where people can call you and the ability to call real phones. It’s cheap - I pay $3/month for unlimited calling out within the US & Canada, and (I think) ~$25/year for “SkypeIn” number (basically a phone # that works from any phone).
It’s cheap and it works pretty well. There’s been no hidden charges, or any charges beyond what I document above.
My only gripes:
If you’re using Skype from the computer, the connection can get wonky if your computer is busy. It works best if you’re not doing anything else. I did have a pretty old computer using Skype, so that might be part of the issue.
The standalone Skype phone I have is pretty chintzy. It doesn’t feel good in my hand, and it’s hard to put in the crook of your neck. There may be better phones out now, though.
Other than that, it’s a good service at a cheap price.
I use it regularly to call a friend in the UK. I often call and can hear him but he can’t hear me, or vice-versa. I then hang up and try again. Sometimes I will then get a busy message for most of the rest of the day.
But it is free and as such I don’t have too much to complain about…
But I would not rely on it for a primary service.
I use it all the time. Skype-to-Skype definitely works the best. Sometimes there will be sound quality issues but for the most part it’s been fine. Skype-to-phone can be a bit iffy sometimes (with lag, or weird echoing).
I used it quite a bit when I was in the US and India to call my parents’ landline back in the UK. I had absolutely no problems with the quality or the connection. I’ve also used Skype-to-Skype for video calls too and not had any problems. I like it a lot and the fact that it only costs something like 2c a minute to call landlines is great for me, as the roaming charges on my mobile in the US were exorbitant, and well, no mobile phones allowed at a radio telescope… 
i use it with webcam so my in laws can see there granddaughter more regularly. No cost when the call is computer to computer, but we did get frequent sound issues part way through the call, though this has recently improved.
Like others here, I use Skype to Skype video calls so my parents and in-laws can see their grandchildren. It’s been great for that. It meant that when Grandma came to visit recently, 2.5 year old daughter was greeting someone she knew well and had opened up after only about 15 minutes of shyness. Much better than if Grandma had been an occassional voice on the telephone.
I find it fascinating that my daughters are born into a world where free video chat between Australia and the UK is an everyday reality.
I’ve never used for-fee Skype, so I can’t speak to that part. The Skype-to-Skype is pretty good, but I’d recommend being wary of a few things which might compromise your call quality.
Wireless internet can mess up your Skype. There are two computers in the house, one hooked by Ethernet cable into the router, the other wireless. The cabled machine, no problems on Skype. The wireless hiccups periodically.
Multiple machines on the same ISP might act a little funky. Often, even with both my two computers on and running Skype, they can’t “see” each other. They think the other machine is offline.
Other than that, I got no complaints. Long-distance Skype-to-Skype to people in California and Wisconsin, no fee. What’s not to like about that?
With my nuclear family here in Indonesia, my mom in Mexico, my in-laws in the US, and friends in Egypt, it is indispensable for free Skype-to-Skype social calls. It’s also very cool if you have a webcam hooked up (or built in to your computer). I gave my mother a tour of our new house just by carrying my laptop around while we were Skyping (I guess you have to have wireless for that, not just Skype, but still).
That’s not to say it is always perfect - obviously it doesn’t work when our Internet is down, which here in Jakarta is annoying often. And sometimes it is just slow or nasty. But 80 or 90 percent of the time it works great. And it’s free! At least the way we use it. We don’t ever bother with Skype-to-land-line calls.
It is my primary phone right now while I’m in Iraq. It works great for calling cell phones and landlines in Korea, Germany, and the United States. It works decent for calling cell phones in Iraq.
It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to carry on a conversation with a 1-800 or 1-866 toll free US number. I can’t figure out why! But for some reason, I have no major issues calling anyone else. I’m begining to think that toll free numbers have to fork over a lot of money when they are called from VOIP, so they pretend they can’t hear you or something. Ha! I hear them fine on my end, but they can NEVER hear me. Doesn’t matter who it is, or what company. Anytime I call a 1-800 number, they can’t hear me! Stupid phone!!
But for calling friends and family in 4 different countries on their cells and land lines… it works great!
Similar to others, we use Skype-to-Skype on a weekly basis with my parents in Australia, so Grandma and Grandad can talk to their youngest granddaughter and see her growing. Connections are always pretty good, with occasional static on the line, but that is easily fixed by putting the call on hold for a few seconds. When you think about having a 45-minute video call between Bahrain and Australia for free, what’s to complain about?
We didn’t bother with a telephone handset though - just got a microphone headset.
I also only use Skype-to-Skype but don’t use the regular phone lines. I do videochat pretty much everyday with my girlfriend in NYC and it’s been a lifesaver. We get occasional hiccups but we usually just reconnect and everything’s fine.
I never had issues with wireless internet & Skype nor multiple machines/one ISP & Skype. Perhaps it’s your setup, not the technologies themselves?
I don’t mind it because Skype to Skype calls have always been free. It’s great for someone who’s out of town and you need to talk to them via the computer.
I use it for both Skype-to-Skype video chats and to call land lines in the US (both 800/866 and toll calls). It is very, very good. I have a fast connection (20mbps down, 1.5mbps up) so that helps. There is no delay and sound quality is excellent.
I have also used to to call S. Africa, Brazil, and all over Europe. No issues at all… but you need a VPN to get it to work from Dubai.
At my last place of employment, we used Skype to connect us to other teams in Canada and Chile. Usually for meetings, so there were several people in a room on a glorified conference call. It was a trip - there were microphones and big recording controller boards and everything.
It…didn’t work so well. Person-to-person calls were fine (we used it for those too), but the conference call stuff was a nightmare. In order to pick everyone’s voices up, they used multi-directional mikes, which also picked up all ambient room noise (and sometimes amplified it, so Canada usually sounded like they were in a tornado). And since it was reliant on the network, any network anomalies in any of the three locations could cause calls to drop or disconnect or the sound to fade out. We pretty much spent more time trying to get the phone to work than actually doing any business in these meetings.
So, for business conference calls, it’s not a good choice. (They’d totally have been better off eating the cost to connect us all properly - really, it would’ve saved a ton of time and we’d all have had more productive meetings.) For personal stuff, though, it seemed OK. Sometimes I’d hear an echo, even Skype-to-Skype, but it was no worse than a cell phone.
I doubt it — I’ve found that multiple machines using Skype on the same ISP have problems both at my place and my friend’s place.
The problem of wireless internet + Skype might be a memory deficiency in that machine.