Put A Little Skype in your VOIP

(February, 2006)

 

The New Bern Computer Users Group meets monthly at 9 AM on the third Saturday of the month at the K of C hall on Pinetree Lane.  I attended their Jan. 21st meeting to listen to Brad Geres speak on VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol.)  Brad is one of the group’s most technically astute members, and teaches computer courses at our local college. While he discussed VOIP in general, he focused specifically on a service called SKYPE.  I thought his presentation was interesting enough to devote this month’s Tribune computer article to a condensed review of his material.

 

            In essence, the lure of VOIP is the ability to beat the high cost of long distance phone calls.  With VOIP, you hook up a cheap microphone to the mic-in port of your computer’s sound card and use it for voice transmission.  Your computer speakers provide the listening devices.  Why on earth do this?  How about the ability to make calls to other computer users anywhere in the world for free?  And if the person you want to call does not have access to a computer, you can call them on their regular land-line for two cents a minute, anywhere in the world.

 

            My wife and I never call LD from our land-line phone (you know, that desk or wall phone in your house.)  Like more and more people, we use our cell phones to make our LD calls, since ‘no extra charge’ long distance is built into our rate plan.  But of course the concept of ‘free’ extends only to our national borders.  International calls are another story.  Now consider people with offspring serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Think about them talking to their sons and daughters for two cents a minute.  And it gets even better, as you’ll see.

 

            Several companies, AOL and Yahoo among them, are getting into the computer phone arena.  Brad spoke in detail about a service called Skype (rhymes with ripe.)  Remember Kazaa, the peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system that competed with Napster until the recording industry lawyers brought them down?  The founders of Kazaa used that same P2P backbone to create Skype.  The product is only now making waves here in the states, but it has been a big hit in Europe where calling across borders can get pretty pricey.  Skype claims to average 150K new registered users daily!  Since Skype uses the internet for transmission, and the service is P2P, they play no part in the process aside from providing the free software, thereby minimizing their cost of doing business.  They make their money in cases where a computer is only used on one side of the call.   If you call someone on a landline from your PC, or they call you at a number that Skype provides, it’s $.02 per minute.  Or if you have kin in some far-off land, Skype will sell you, for $45 per year, a local phone number in that country so people there can place a local call to contact you via your PC.  That’s $45, plus two cents a minute.

 

How it Works

            Skype works similarly to an instant messaging service, like those used by AOL, MSN, or Yahoo.  You have a Skype ID that you give to your ‘buddies’.  They sign on to Skype and the software tells them if you are online.  They text message you to ask if you are available to accept a call. You say yes, the other party pushes a ‘place call’ button, your computer plays a ring tone, and you click to answer and start talking.

 

            Now here is the really cool part.  Skype’s latest version 2.0 incorporates a beta (not ready for prime time) video capability.  With a cheap desktop videocam, you can beam your smiling mug over the internet so the person on the other computer can both see and hear you.  Sorry, no more running the PC in your skivvies now.  (Well, of course you can turn that feature off.)  But think about it – talk and see the grandkids for free!

 

System Requirements

            To use Skype, you need to be running a computer with either Windows XP or 2000 (98 won’t work), Mac OS X, or Linux.  Your hardware should have a 400Mhz processor or greater, with at least 128MB of RAM (you really should have a minimum of 256MB to properly run XP anyway), and 15MB of available hard drive space.  Now for about half my readers, here’s the ‘gotcha’:  Skype really works best if both parties have broadband (cable or DSL) connections.  If only one party has it, you’ll experience occasional lags.  And if both parties have dial-up, forget it. 

 

I experimented with Skype a bit in preparing this article, and have had some mixed results.  With some calls the other party and I ended up stepping on each other’s sentences a bit.  On other calls, things went very smoothly.  NBCUG’s early adopters all seemed to have videocams so I could see them as well as hear them, and the synching of voice and picture was pretty good!  Not quite up to par with the videophones Popular Science envisioned for the future back when I was a kid, but definitely a step in the right direction.  I have a cheap old USB videocam which I hooked up, and folks on the other end said it worked well.  They’d have preferred something better to look at, I’m sure, but technology can only do so much.

 

If the thought of sitting in front of a computer to make a call turns you off, you can pick up a wireless VOIP-enabled telephone for about $125 or less.  It comes with all the USB hardware to attach the base station to your computer.

 

You can download the program for free and read more about it at http://www.skype.com.  Talk to you online!