I use it to video call home when I travel for business. Much better than handing the phone from one kid to the other…“Fine”…“uh huh”… they just walk in front of the capera, wave, say “Hi”, walk out… it’s like being home.
Skype to Skype is free, so it’s great for that sort of thing.
‘Send SMS’ is greyed out.’
Not sure if you’re on a Mac or Windows; on my Mac it’s “Start Chat.”
I also have it set to start a chat (rather than initiate a phone call) when double-clicking a contact. That’s in Preferences.
Aha. I’m on a Mac. I used Start Chat, which I had been to before. This time I found the text box way at the bottom.
It’s probably worth pointing out that the recipient will only receive the message when you are both online at the same time. It will remain queued up until there is a direct connection, it doesn’t work like an e-mail.
It’s great for calls, and I use it for IMing all the time. The screen sharing function has also come in handy when I’ve done some overseas troubleshooting with friend’s computers.
That is worth pointing out.
I’m online when I’m at home, and I’ll leave the computer on if I’m reading or go out to the store or whatever.
It’s the reason my mother (who’s so tightfisted the air screams when she closes her hand around it) learned to use computers. I’m on Skype with her right now. Very little footprint, as far as I can tell.
Everyone in the company I work for uses Skype - we provide business accounts to everyone, so they can make free calls to the U.S. The call quality bounces back and forth - mostly it’s good, but there are annoying times when calls constantly disconnect, there is noise and/or echo, or one side can’t hear the other.
In using Skype almost a year, I can recall only one instance of Skype servers causing a system-wide problem, and it was fixed in a few hours.
It is working well, a nice little minimized IM app.
Thanks again, all!
We used it a lot when our daughter was studying in Germany. We did video calls, but they overtaxed her rather old laptop, so we moved to voice only. We used the IM feature only when the audio wasn’t working for some reason.
My wife kept it on, with the volume on her speakers turned up, so we could hear it when she called us. Never a problem.
I just got my first Skype message.
Spam.
Damn.
Block it and report inappropriate content, job done.
Did that before I posted here. 
I use it to talk to my folks We use video calls and it is pretty good. The image is perfect but it works and they get to see their grandson several times a week despite living a continent away.
Been using Skype on the Mac and PC for probably four years now. I primarily use it as a local phone number so my family back in NH can call me toll-free in case of emergencies or whatever, and as a business communication tool for my clients to find me quickly and easily. The rate to the US is dirt-cheap, so $25-30 lasts me several months of calls to my grandmother every other week. There have been technical difficulties, but I’m not versed enough to know whether it’s the program or the computer or the connection. I keep it running pretty much all the time I’ve got the computer on, and never noticed any problems with slowdown.