Another great reason to carry your laptop with you on trips
 

Recently I signed up with Skype.com and for $38 I got a local phone number for 1 year. It's VoIP, meaning you use the computer to make and receive calls.

At least for now, all domestic calls are free.

International calls are amazingly cheap. I didn't check all the countries, but it ranges somewhere between 0.01 to 0.03 cents a minute.

I'm sitting in my room at Hilton Osaka right now, (waiting for the Germany-Poland match) and just received and made couple of calls from/to US. The people that called me just dialed a local (941-Sarasota) number, so it does not cost them any different than if they were calling me at home. From Japan the calls are 0.013 cents per minute.

You do need a high speed connection wherever you are, but with HS, a laptop with mic and speakers you can chat for a long time with people back at home for practically nothing. Here at Osaka Hilton, the Executive Lounge has free Wi-Fi, so after talking for about 20 minutes with the girl that takes care of my house, my pre-paid account was depleted by about a quarter. :-D

Brilliant!

The highter the speed of the connection the clearer and trouble free communication and since the Wi-Fi here at the hotel is really good, the conversation was better than any cellphone I ever had.

and no I don't work for Skype. Most of you know me here and I assure you this is just FYI post, not a sale post. :-)

and now it's time to enjoy the game!

Reporting from Osaka Hilton!

Thanks for the good idea. But for me it's just too cumbersome to carry a laptop everywhere for making calls. I prefer a cellphone instead.

How old is that "girl" who takes care of the house, anyway?

Now imagine the same thing works with only a simple PDA (no laptop) plus the Seattle local phone number is completely free. Come on, invest in some high tech and don't play around with stone age technology ;-). Over here it works.

and I usually carry 2 anyway, so at least for now, I ditched my cellphone :-D

We just signed up with Skype also. My son is going to spend the summer in Honduras, we live in California and his girlfriend lives in Germany. Our service is free because we are only going to call each other on the computer. It requires a headset with microphone and that's it. I understand that if we wanted to call from our computer to a regular phone line then charges apply but are minimal, for example it is about .03 cents a minute to Germany. We are thrilled because we thought we were going to be faced with horrific phone bills. We heard about it through a friend who lives in California and talks to her husband who is working in Japan. Also, the dive shop owner in Honduras said one of her employees is from the UK and he talks to his family all the time for free. Check out the website, it is great. And I don't work for Skype either! :) Barb

Another Skype fan here. So far, we've only used the free computer version.

DSL lines come with Voip modem included in Germany, so if you have DSL, you just have to configure a provider to use voip with you common phone. Free world dialup (FWD) is a good service you could use, but you can use any SIP provider you like. It doesn't cost one extra cent. Skype use a proprietary protocol, which is bad.

We don't make telephone calls while on vacation.

Skype Rocks!!! I lived overseas and used it to call home. It was AWESOME to call family and chit/chat from Europe without worrying that it was costing a fortune. I paid less than 2 eurocents/minute.

I also talked for free - computer to computer. But, if my connection had too much static, I switched to a regular call and paid the piddly 2 cents/minute.

If you're travelling overseas for an extended period of time, I'd highly recommend taking your laptop and using Skype.

If you are studying abroad Skype is great! My son and his girlfriend used it while she was in Australia. The connection computer-to-computer was clear as a bell.

That's really amazing. But here I sit with slow, slow, sloooowww dial-up.
How was your flight over, BTW?

Hi

I think this is not a bad purchase, but call me old fashioned as I find it easier calling an access number and then dialing the international number, I have been using www.reallyjustdial.co.uk , I select the country I want to call, dial the access numbers followed by my destination number and I am through.

Also I have noted that if you are traveling a lot the one thing that you may consider is to have the peace of mind that you near and dear can contact you easily from back home.

Besides, I found the rates of skype expensive in most cases and similar to the rates on www.reallyjustdial.co.uk that are cheap so no worries

Regards

Skype is only 1.7 eurocents a minute from Europe to North America or Australia ! Assuming you are phoning a number. It is free if you both have Skype. I use it all the time to keep in touch with family and friends around the world for free.

a former boss of mine swore allegiance to Skype. But whenever he called anyone, it was hard to hear him, he had a bad connection, etc. and he was calling US to US. So I've never been a big fan of their system.