Regular readers will remember Sally, Donna’s friend that we visited in DC recently. She was heading for Kosovo, but that fell thru, so she was given a choice of several other garden spots around the globe, well she chose Windhoek, Namibia. She now has less than a week before she heads of to the other side of the world. Wanting to keep in touch, but also wanting to avoid HUGE phone bills, the friends at the State Department recommended she try Skype a free Internet telephony service. We downloaded the 6.4 Meg application and it installed with ease. The only stumbling block was I had to dig out the free microphone that came with the PC, tear it out of it’s plastic bag and plug it in.
Our first test call failed when she couldn’t figure out where the microphone was and how to enable it on her laptop. Call two went thru without a hitch as her daughter was there and was techno-savvy enough to get Sally going right. Talked for about 20 minutes and had only a couple of negatives. We had some echoes happening when she did not use her headset, but with the headset it was fine. Must be the location of the built-in speakers in relation to her built-in mike. Then we seemed to lose the connection for about 15-20 seconds towards the end.
All in all a very positive experience considering the cost. I can’t even imagine what AT&T would charge for a 20 minute call to, literally, half way around the planet.
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