In Praise of Skype

I was reading Des Walsh’s blog today and he’s written a post about Skype.

For those that don’t know, Skype is an Internet Phone system, which enables you to make international calls for free, from PC to PC. You can call a regular phone from Skype too and, although that does cost something, it’s trivial compared to the cost of traditional International call providers.

There are other plusses to using Skype, particularly if you’re in the networking business where your network partners are in other countries. You can send files or web addresses back and forth while you’re talking, so you can be looking at the same information at the same time. You can hold conference calls and you can do web cam calls.

Basically, it’s an invaluable tool for people working online from home.

For those who are not familiar with Skype and get put off by the idea of talking PC-to-PC, let me set your mind at rest:

Firstly Skype is free to download. This will only take a few minutes, depending on your connection speed. It installs quickly and easily – just click the install button.

Having got it installed, you can use the ‘options’ command to set it up the way you like. They give you the facility to make a test call to Skype so that you can be sure your microphone is set up correctly. This is important – it’s very easy to do, but it’s also very necessary.

There are some simple controls in Skype that allow you to adjust the volume of your microphone. Your PC has a ’sound card’ (a gizmo that enables the PC to record and play sounds) that also allows you to control your audio settings separately. It may be necessary to adjust some of these if you can’t get the result you want just by adjusting your Skype settings. Skype gives you some clear and simple instructions on how to do this.

Once you’ve made a test call and everything is OK you’re all set up and ready to go.

It is possible for laptop users to make calls using the built in microphone and speakers, but if you do this the person you’re talking to will get a very off-putting echo. This is caused by the sound coming out of your speakers being relayed back down the microphone.

If you just want to try out Skype without incurring any cost you can use it this way – it will demonstrate how it works. But if you want to make good quality calls you need to get a headset.

Headsets cost from around US$10 up. The sound quality you get from using Skype with a stereo headset is absolutely incredible. It’s like the person is sitting right there next to you. The other advantage of headsets is that it leaves you hands-free, so you can make notes or transfer files back and forth with the person you’re talking to quickly and easily.

I’ve been a Skype user for some years now, and I’m an unashamed fan! (And I don’t get paid anything for saying all this nice stuff about them!)

Let me know your experiences with Skype – leave a comment or Skype me: martin70707.

No related posts.

Tagged as: skype