Has anyone been using Skype

[jennymcglone]

I've just joined up to Skype, and a few of the people I deal with are using it. I think it's a great tool for small business, to save money and get in contact with clients and partners.

I run my own arts company, which involves alot of time on the phone organising events, gigs, teaching. Many of the people I work with are scattered across the UK and beyond. I don't have a webcam yet, but planning to get one as one the the guys I work with alot lives about a 2 hour drive away and he has a webcam and skype, and it's great being able to speak to him face to face (as it were).

Wondering if other people had been using it and what they thought? Do you think more people will sign up?

[inVue]

Hi Jenny,

Skype is the dominant player in the VoIP market. Because of the huge potential it has in the future, eBay bought the company for €2.5 billion end of last year. It is the cheapest way to communicate and definately going to be as popular as msn/yahoo/aol instant messengers.

Most of our clients previously don't know about Skype when they subscribe into inVue. Because we developed inVue to be integrated with Skype, now all of our clients use Skype regularly as their main communication channel for instant messaging and cheap phone calls.

You can visit our website www.invue.com for more informations on why we choose Skype to be integrated with inVue. The forecast will be more and more people including businesses to start using this VoIP system.

[Megalegs]

Hi jenny,

I use skype to speak to my family in South Africa & my sister in Beijing - we all have webcams so it is great way to see each other for no cost!!
Webcams go for around £10 too so it's really cheap.

I think more people will start to use it soon, i just worry that they may bring in a charge for the calls in the future! I hope not.

Megan.

[InnoCreate]

BT are supposed to be making their network IP based by 2008 or 2009 and every house hold will have a broadband connection as part of the standard line rental - analogue phones will then end up as being a thing of the past!

Will be interesting to see if the rest of the world follows suit - if they do it's going to be very very cheap to talk to anyone nearly anywhere in the world.

I'm not sure how BT plan to make their money on a free broadband enabled network with IP phones, maybe higher line rentals or perhaps they'll charge a small fee for IP calls still. I think the broadband connection is going to be very basic as well so i guess they're hoping a lot of people will upgrade their accounts as well.

Will be surprised as well if BT make the 2008/2009 deadline - in a 5 mile radius of me we still have about 3 exchanges yet to be enabled - must be the same in many places.

[jennymcglone]

Glad I'm on the right track then! I'm planning on sorting out the webcam situation over the weekend, nothing to fancy on a budget.

[elaborations]

I use skype for both personal and business use. We can have very clear conversation - in comparison to applications like MSN messenger etc. I'd say it would be useful to invest in a mic/headphone as well.

[VLAHAKISA]

I plugged mine in about four weeks ago and I love it.

Now I hate it when I have to use my normal phone for some reason


Best Wishes

Amanda

[zenken]

I've used skype for about 8 months now and its really come a long way since then, such a useful tool the positbilites with it are next to endless.

I recommend it

[Rachael]

I love Skype too except for the fact that if you put 'skype me' any wacko can call - which I learnt the hard way!!!

Although - I've had no one serious skype me yet which is a shame

[shane74]

I installed it the other day and i imported my business contact list and you were the only person to appear Rachael. I haven't really used it since because of the discovery of all these charges though.

[Anglo-Sino]

In a word, for us, fantastic. Shane when you state "all these charges" Skype to Skype is completely free....how can you complain? I made about 7 calls to Germany FOC yesterday and spent about an hour on Skype to China. I think the real benefits of Skype are in long distance calls.
If you don't want just anybody contacting you i think in tools you can select only people from your contact list to contact you.