Time for Skype? - update

I digress ...

I don't want to endorse products or services here (except Windows' dominating superiority over Mac*), so this is just info you might find useful and worth checking out for yourself.

My friend Vernon in Tanzania first introduced me to Skype two years ago during my visit to his home in Arusha. Skype is a web-based telephone system that allows you to make dirt-cheap phone calls (to another computer, a land line, cell phone or whatever) from your computer to any place in the world (so long as your computer is connected to the internet).

All you gotta do is install the software & plug in a set of headphones (with microphone).

Skype sells 7 hours of talk-time "credits" for ten bucks ... that's $1.40 per hour (or 2.3 cents per minute). That's much, much less expensive than what I'm paying for cell service ... and maybe best of all, there's No Charge for calls placed to other Skype users.

I just made my first Skype call to Ken, who reported the quality was "slightly garbled" and "definitely not a cell phone" (but then rumors persist that AVCLUB.US maintains a highly-secret labyrinth of subterranean particle-pair splitters for streaming data back and forth across space-time ... 23rd century technology you and I can only dream about).

Not bad, especially if you see lots of international phone calls on your horizon. The only caveat is that Skype is CANNOT be used to place calls to 911 emergency service.

ps. Since programming everybody into my cell I realize I don't remember phone numbers any more, and have nightmares about dropping my little Nokia into the lake and losing all my contact 411 forever.

Skype includes a Contact List, so all I've gotta do now is move all my contacts' names and numbers onto Skype (where they'll be safe from losing my phone to the lake).

* "The computers from hell."