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.