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Internet telephones/Skype?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Just seen this and it looks like it could be a pretty cool xmas pressie for my boyfriend, and I may actually get to hear his voice over a phone once in a while instead of texts/msn.
It says you download Skype, for free, and then call people, for free. So, where's the catch? Internet phones are something I've heard of, but I don't really know what they do (well call people obviously), how they do it, and how much they cost to run.
It says you download Skype, for free, and then call people, for free. So, where's the catch? Internet phones are something I've heard of, but I don't really know what they do (well call people obviously), how they do it, and how much they cost to run.
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I'm on it now in fact.
The catch: nobody knows about it! Get everyone on it! Come on!!!! And you only need speakers and mic.
By the way, to call landlines and mobiles it costs normal prices, but other skype lines are free. But soon you'll be able to get skype on your mobile, so you'll connect VIA GPRS or whatever and when you get a call it will get connected automatically.
How cool is that?
It's thanks to skype that I can actually talk to my mate every night. We both have £5 headsets from Game - which are awesome and absolutely fine.
I don't know about that monster thing, seems a lot of money, but it could be fun, not necessary to use skype though!
And if your friends are all on MSN Messenger then why not just use that.
There's nothing that special about Skype - EXCEPT it can work over port 80 and gets through a lo of firewalls, like Skype voice service works for my cousin at Uni, whilst MSN Chat via voice is blocked
But Google Talk works as well as Skype for PC to PC calls.
Sorry if I sound like a fanboy, just saying that I would have used MSN except for the reasons above (and because direct connections seem to be blocked at my uni, whereas Skype can be configured to go through the proxy), Skype was a far better option for me.
Some motherboards now have some kind of funky chip on it so you can take Skype calls whilst your computer is turned off / in hibernate mode. Not sure if it works the same with MSN though?
How do you expect us to answer that when we don't know anything about your connection?
You have to give us more details ..
or just download something like Tune Up Utilities 30 day trial and use that to change your net settings to match your connection.
Basically through Skype the Skype server takes your call and does a check - if it's a skype 'number' i.e. an address like say, (vinyl.vicky) then it tries to connect for free. If it's an actual number then it skips over the internet to a local telephone provider, so in France it would be whatever french telecoms is, and then make a call like that. I think in the UK it goes through talktalk or something like that, but Skype get preferential rates.
Still, if you want cheap calls to mobiles, use an override number :thumb:. Mind you, I just tend to use my free minutes on my mobile phone. The best thing to do is skype-ise as many as your friends as possible and tell them to leave it always on and then you can ring them whenever you like for free. :-)
I've just got off the phone with a certain lady for 3 hours whilst we were both doing our homeworks, excellent :cool: do you know how hard it is to express the Reimann Zeta function in terms of the Bernoulli function kinda thing?
Anyway, yea basically you 'top up' before hand with credit, but it lasts a fair while. I make regular house calls (dont bother with mobiles, €0.20 per min!) pretty much every day and topped up with £10 at the start of uni and I've still got €3 left (£10 is about €14.50). Pretty competitive. Not going to replace a house phone seriously, but extremely useful for long talks to the spouse / girlfriend / boyfriend / fancy as we know they can run up huge bills, so you can happily sit on your computer talking for several hours without a) holding up the phone line b) running up a phone bill etc.
Sorry, ranted a bit there, any more questions and I'll try to answer. I recommend if you're interested, download it. If you want to ring me (to hear my sexy voice
UK fixed lines 0.0 !!
UK mobiles (sat/sun) 3
united states 1
argentina 1
albania 7
czech republic 1
united states (portable) 1
new zealand 1
finland 1
I just checked skypes rate to call via a PC to a USA Landline and it's 40% more expensive. I'd rather use my normal house phone and save the electric bill + the extra 40%
I once talked to someone in the UK for 3 hours on a normal phone and all it costed me was the initial 3p
I can't say whether it's for everyone or just if you keep buying credit (this is only the second time I have) but zomg. I only use skype for calling mum and friends on landlines anyway so I'm not going to have to top up for 6 months
Skype Beta 3 is very nice indeed.
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-gb/helloagain.html