Anonymous

UK

Consultant

I've been using Skype for 6 months or so since my brother (who lives in California) saw it featured on TechTV.
We use it ALL the time for personal calls. I use it to have extended calls AND conference calls (up to 5 people) with collegues in the US.

It provides instant messaging. The quality is excellent, the codecs are proprietary (although, I suspect, based on GSM phone codecs) but this is why they WORK - even on low speed links, and low spec machines. My (other) brother has Skyped over dial-up.. quality was not great but it worked, my wife has used her aging PII 266 laptop - below recommended spec but it worked just fine.

My point? Here is a technology that delivers 'more than it says on the box'... what a refreshing change. It's not overweight, it seems to be pretty reliable - and the basic services (which are pretty generous) are free.

Even heard of a collegue in Germany calling a collegue in the US using his iPaq on a wireless link....