my first skype call

so, i'm certainly not the first to post about skype, nor the first to post about either their linux beta or their recently released beta for mac os x, however, i thought i'd jot down some first impressions since i finally had my first call. for those of you who have never heard of skype:

We’ve got a simple bit of software we want to give you. It’ll let you make free phone calls to your friends all over the world. And we don’t want any money for it. It’s free.

You could think of us as the big, free Internet telephony company. We prefer to think of ourselves as a big group hug, even a present. Yes… that’s it… we’re a present… but without the ribbon.

so, since Toronto - Vancouver phone calls aren't cheap roland and i figured we'd give skype a shot for a discussion this afternoon (plus we were having firewall issues at some end with iChat AV).

how was it you ask? i must say, i was impressed. i'm not a VoIP/Internet telephony expert by *any* means (unlike some people), but i found the quality to be quite good. it wasn't perfect, but given the fact that my cell reception in the basement approaches 0, it was no worse than that. plus, i have an old headset (and i don't even remember why i have it), which i just plugged into my powerbook and it made for a nice handsfree experience (also unlike my cell).

the interface on the osx client is good too ... it doesn't feel like a windows app turned cocoa. i may well be using skype more in the future (though, i will say - i agree with boris that there should be an open source alternative).

oh, and if you care... my skype id is 'walkah' (surprise surprise)... so call me :)