Skype vs. Cell Phone

I work from home 3 days a week, and go into the office once a week, and usually use Friday’s for school and stuff I’ve been putting off for 3 weeks. As such, I spend copious amounts of time on Trillian or the phone interacting with work colleagues.

Last month, my cell phone bill was over $57. I felt that was kind of expensive. Looking at the details of my bill, the culprit was I went over my minutes; I have 500, used 1380.

So, today, I installed Skype with a co-worker, and it works pretty well when your not in the middle of hurricane Daniel (or whoever is the problem child of the week). Free, good quality voice chat, and with my headphones and mic, it’s hands free (co worker has a headset he bought for 24 bucks while I just use my DJ headphones and my default, duck taped to monitor gaming mic). No setup beyond installing a program and filling in your name and you can receive calls which are voice chats from other people on your contact list; like receiving an instant message that you answer. You can use cell phones and landlines, but I’m not paying for that jazz.

We tried to conference in a Java-skillet from Arkansas, but his satellite internet was iffy. We could hear him sometimes, other times it was this hilarious Amy-Amy, Good Gorrilla types of sounds (text to speech elongated [“Congo” Reference]).

Anyway, that should shave off a ton of minutes.

3 Replies to “Skype vs. Cell Phone”

  1. Rock. Yes Skype is helpful. I’ve got folks in Colombia to deal with so I can’t complain. The thing is that while I can get decent long distance rates to Bogota (onesuite.com), who in the world has a phone at their desk anymore? Eric D was talking about Gizmo Project and I checked it out reading articles etc, about how they’re open source and they use SIP and whatever and Skype doesn’t etc., and I was totally sold so I actually paid for call out and call in but after a day or two, and not really using that much – yes just letting the sucker run on my desktop – It’s definitely not ready for prime time. Unless you’ve got some kind of podcast recording to do or something I can’t recommend it. Stay with Skype for now.

    I use VOIP with Vonage which is good, but I would definitely dump it for something else if I could keep my number – that is the holy grail to me. Glad I didn’t dump it for Gizmo Project.

    Shit – I just made a blog post on Jesse’s site! Props to Elmyr.

    Cheers,
    Brent

  2. I just started using Skype not long ago also. It freaking ROCKS! I got a couple of clients that I am dealing with long distance and I have a long distance service that is pretty cool already (they have the prepay minute deal like Skype) but the money I put out for long conference calls pretty much sucked. The quality of Skype rules and the pricing is NOT BAD at all. Oh, and the headset aspect rocks also being that most of the time who I’m talking to is also in front of a computer. A few bugs hear and there BUT HEY that’s why they come out with new and improved versions.

    PS:
    Using my cell phones sorry contract based plan for long distance……ummmmm………H – E double hockey sticks NO!

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