Recently I’ve been using Skype a lot to speak to friends and family in the UK and Australia. It’s pretty good for the following reasons:
- There’s no need to configure your firewall
- Everyone else seems to have Skype already
- It’s pretty good quality wise.
- The webcam function is really good, especially in full screen
Yes, it’s not ideal – it’s a proprietary network and the software is closed source, but on the other hand it just works. And now that the linux beta version supports video calling, I think it’s the best there is.
However, Skype (the company) shouldn’t be praised too much for their new linux beta – why didn’t we get it when the Windows version was released? Why should open source community suffer? Did Skype not realise it’s another potential market for SkypeIn/Out? So frustrating, but that’s how it is in the world of linux I guess!
This morning we called my sister in the UK. The call quality was great as was the full screen video quality. You always know something is good when it’s shocking! My only little gripe was that we couldn’t view my sisters webcam when ours was on. I guess that’s just a bug in the beta (2.0.17 I think) and could well have been something to do with my webcam itself.