Last week in the Minnesota lake country, my wife and I had to do a couple of conference calls together. We tried the first one by listening to my cell phone together. It’s always nice to be tête à tête, (ear to ear, really). But as a conference call, the experience just wasn’t very satisfactory.
The hotel had a high-speed Internet connection. My laptop has a speaker and built-in microphone. So I downloaded Skype. I’d read about Skype in various blogs and trade rags. It lets you place calls to regular phones in 20+ countries, using your computer as your phone, for around two cents (U.S. $0.02) per minute.
The second conference call, over Skype, was like night and day from the first. We used my laptop as a speakerphone. The connection was fine; none of the participants had any trouble understanding each other. (Skype also lets you conference in up to four people plus yourself.) There was just a bit of lag time, which required us to wait to make sure the other person had finished speaking before jumping in. But that took almost no time to get used to.
Skype is definitely worth a look, and a listen.
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