Sunday, July 22, 2007

Northern friends question

This is a question for my "Northern Blogger" friends, or anyone who may have one. I'm wondering if anyone is familiar or has "Skype" service? We have a guy here helping out at the store for a week who is a self proclaimed "computer geek" and showed us his "Skype" phone. It runs off a wireless router (which we have) and the service, according to the website, is UNLIMITED LONG DISTANCE to anywhere within the US and Canada. The service is 29.95 for 12 months or 8.95 for 3 months. 9.00 for 3 months of UNLIMITED long distance? I used his phone last night when he was here and called Kassie, and the reception was just like talking on a normal phone. Just wondering if anyone else either has one or has used one. I'm ready to run into Yellowknife on Wednesday and pay out the 200.00 for the phone, because in what we pay in LD as there is no LD package on this phone, it will pay for itself within 3 months. We don't use a lot of LD from the house as we use the web cam A LOT, but it would be nice to have a nice clear connection, and stretch out on the couch to chat, and not worry about how much the LD is going to be. Every call we make from here that is not calling the store is LD, so this would save us a HUGE amount of money. Just looking for some feedback.

5 comments:

Jaime said...

We have Skype, but we don't really use it. I'm afraid your friend might have confused you as to what Skype really is, though. It's just a computer program that is free to download and to use. You can call other Skype users for free. So basically you are calling other computers. All you need to buy is a microphone (with or without headphones). It's absolutely no different than using the "call" feature of MSN Messenger. It's just voice chatting over the internet.

What does cost money is if you want to call actual phones (for anyone you want to talk to that doesn't have Skype or doesn't want to use it). Their prices are decent and they frequently have specials going on, you can find out about them through email.

I hope that helped you decide about Skype. :) If you're still interested, I highly recommend downloading it and trying it out (you can call me! I can give you my username) and then trying to coerce your friends/family into downloading it as well, because the only cost in that is buying a microphone.

All in all, Skype is a good, reliable company if you are going to go all the way and purchase a long-distance plan. I have good feelings for Skype because I won $500 from one of their contests last year, haha. Can't complain about that!

--Jaime

Tawny said...

Hey Tina - Taylor was suggesting that I recommend Skype to my parents so that we could take advantage of the same deal - so I've heard of it but don't know much about it. Sounds like a pretty affordable alternative though, and if you can get your parents to buy into the service, it should probably pay for itself for sure.

Valentina said...

We have Skype installed on our computer (as Jaime said, you can download it for free); we use it all the time to call our friends and family in Canada. You can either call from computer to computer for free (and even use a webcam if you have one) or you can purchase "Skype minutes" from the Skype Web site and call from your computer to a land phone. Mike's parents don't have highspeed internet, so we call them on their house phone and it is extremely cheap. We usually purchase a 10 dollar card, which lasts us for months.

Rob, Tina and the boys said...

Yeah, I think I've got myself sold on it. LD up here is extremly expensive. I think I'm going to buy the Skype phone though. Although it's a bit of an investment at first, I don't have to sit at the computer and talk. My sister and I talk still on a daily basis, and it's hard to sit and talk at the computer with the kids. It would be very convenient for me to be able to walk around with the phone and talk. I'm glad to hear others use it. I'm going to download it for sure as soon as I get a minute (which is Joey's naptime!)

Rob, Tina and the boys said...

And, if I buy the phone with the LD plan (8.95 for 3 months of unlimited) I don't need to worry about getting others to download the program, I can just call landlines phones. Plus, the times I have to call Yellowknife would also be free. Yep, I've got myself convinced. :)