Discussion
Regular user, both on laptop and ipaq. Works astonishingly well, even when calling mobile phones in Europe, while sitting in Panera Bread in USA, using their free* wifi connection. Highly recommended.
*free = honour bound to purchase coffee/soup/sandwich etc. But since their food is good, and I do have to eat....
*free = honour bound to purchase coffee/soup/sandwich etc. But since their food is good, and I do have to eat....
jodypress said:
skype is excellent, i use it to call international back to the UK. it works out 1.1p/min to uk/usa etc. (landlines) bit more for mobile.
if the other person has skype its free.
only thing is, can;t use internet programs whilst talking on skype.
Why not? I often do email/use Firefox while using Skype, (on a PC obviously - can't do more than one process on the ipaq)
A 'must' buy is a USB phone (ebay <£10). Makes the whole thing very natural, just like using a normal phone.
The audio quality is superb, and actually requires surprising little bandwidth. It's certainly better than GSM quality for the most part. In my experience it's either brilliant or totally unusable - just reconnect for a good 'line'.
softwaresorcerer said:
Why not? I often do email/use Firefox while using Skype, (on a PC obviously - can't do more than one process on the ipaq)
A 'must' buy is a USB phone (ebay <£10). Makes the whole thing very natural, just like using a normal phone.
The audio quality is superb, and actually requires surprising little bandwidth. It's certainly better than GSM quality for the most part. In my experience it's either brilliant or totally unusable - just reconnect for a good 'line'.
i have no explanation but when i use other internet progs skype quality suffers.
but when i use my laptop on the wireless router it is ok.
i have a bluetooth usb dongle and headset to test soon
www.skype.com/
I used it a while back and found that it's not that great but that was nearly a year ago now
I used it a while back and found that it's not that great but that was nearly a year ago now
docevi1 said:
www.skype.com/
I used it a while back and found that it's not that great but that was nearly a year ago now
I'd heard they'd done alot of work on the codec (voice encoder) so I think it has improved.
Got it loaded last night and tried it over this sat link - latency can be quite high - and occaisionally I could hear the other end very well thogh he complained that I was breaking up a bit and words were being dropped out of my sentences.
I was also hearing myself looped back from his computer, this may be because he was using a laptop and the speakers would be close to the microphone.
Since my microphone aint too good I'm guessing the best be it to get a USB phone and try that.
cheers
Ex
We've been trialing it for a few weeks and I'm impressed (thanks Dans). We've tried it in the office (2mb pipe) home via 54g and adsl with both laptops, desktops and PDA, it is fine on all of these. I did try it on a pda via gprs and it was pants
The only issue I have is switching my user between my laptop and pda, it gives me grief which I can only resolve by deleting an xml file and restarting.
We have seen no issues with resources, the only time it has given my a problem is when I was creating a huge pdf, skype gave up (the pdf was fine).
D
The only issue I have is switching my user between my laptop and pda, it gives me grief which I can only resolve by deleting an xml file and restarting.
We have seen no issues with resources, the only time it has given my a problem is when I was creating a huge pdf, skype gave up (the pdf was fine).
D
jodypress said:
**BEWARE**
It eats resources...
can you elaborate on what resources etc. i only use it when i want to call abroad, otherwise i completely exit it.
thanks
Whenever its running on my 2000 build, it uses up about 30MB worth of ram even when not in use! Thats more than MSN Messenger!!!
gh0st said:
Whenever its running on my 2000 build, it uses up about 30MB worth of ram even when not in use! Thats more than MSN Messenger!!!
XP SP2, using about 11mb this does not increase much on a call.
The other good thing about skype over things like msn is that is is peer to peer (well I think it is a good thing
) I'm hoping they sort out the video stuff soonish.
D
davidd said:
We've been trialing it for a few weeks and I'm impressed (thanks Dans). We've tried it in the office (2mb pipe) home via 54g and adsl with both laptops, desktops and PDA, it is fine on all of these. I did try it on a pda via gprs and it was pants
The only issue I have is switching my user between my laptop and pda, it gives me grief which I can only resolve by deleting an xml file and restarting.
We have seen no issues with resources, the only time it has given my a problem is when I was creating a huge pdf, skype gave up (the pdf was fine).
D
To be fair to Skype, they do say that it won't work over GPRS, so it's not surprising that it's poor.
What do you mean by switching users between laptop and PDA? I'm struggling to follow the problem there - I have the same username on a laptop and PDA, and simply run whichever I need to run. If both are running, then they both 'ring' for incoming calls, and both can be used for outgoing. Not sure if they can be used simultaneously, but then I'm only blessed with one mouth (large as it may be...) and I've only tried one at a time
Also not seen any issues with resources, at least, nothing that's caused me to even consider there might be a resource problem.
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff