New Skype 4.0 Review

For those who may not know, I lived in Chile, South America for about two years and when I needed to call home Skype would come to my rescue. Nothing beats free and all of the Cyber Cafes I ever went to in South America had Skype already installed on every single PC.

 

Now, this could be because of the Internet connections South America but there were times where Skype was not my friend and I was very close to deleting the program all together. Needless to say, I did continue using the previous version of Skype until my return to the States, dropped calls, echoes, or the other caller could hear me all plague my calls. However, in Skype's defense these problematic occurrences didn't happen all the time.

 

Now, Skype introduced a new version, Skype 4.9 and TMC Contributor, Vivek Naik reported, "For prospective and potential first time users, the application is used for Voice and Video over Internet Protocol, or "VVoIP," calls, and its services are mostly for free - audio calls, video and audio calls, instant messages, sending files and emailing. Paid services are for call forwarding when off-line, sending text messages to, and calling, phones and mobiles."

 

Skype claims that its new version allows users to experience the very best Skype video calling experience possible even on a low-bandwidth connection with a new built-in bandwidth manager with up to 30-frames-per-second High Quality Video with an internet connection of 400 Kb/s or higher, a dual-core processor PC and a Skype Certified High Quality Video webcam.

 

Skype also claims that the new version increases the call quality. The new audio codec achieves wideband audio quality using 50 percent less bandwidth than previously required.

 

Testing the voice portion of Skype with a friend of mine, Jorge Hidalgo who lives in Chile we spoke for about a half hour and only once did we experience audio difficulties. I was able to hear others in the background clearly as well, which surprised me as with the older version hearing the person you were speaking to was sometimes a miracle.

 

Hidalgo commented, "I think this version is much better than the previous one because you are able talk with better clarity and better understand what the other person is saying. With the older version, I experienced many problems and so far those problems seem to be resolved."

 

Unfortunately, since I don't have a Web cam, I wasn't able to test out this feature but I'm assuming it would work better as well since the voice section has improved. Also, when sending messages while talking, the messages are instantaneous. Hidalgo sent me news links regarding happenings in Chile he thought I should know and I was able to review them as soon as he hit enter. A nice feature is that the text is kept on the same page. A new window does not open up as it did in the previous version, making everything kept together, compact and simple.

 

The layout is even more user friendly, with not many links and distractions on the main page. Profiles are shown of those who choose to fill out that section when creating an account when they signed up for Skype, making it easy to see who speaks what language, where they are from and any other information they entered.

 

Overall, Skype 4.0 is now not only my permanent friend but a product I would recommend not only because it's free but because it is hassle free and we could all use a little less drama in our lives.