Skype! The program that lets you talk computer to computer or computer to phone. Computer to computer is free. All you need are a microphone and speakers or earphones – at each end, of course. Computer to phone has a fee, but it isn’t much.
My wife just got back from 7 weeks in Mexico. We spoke every morning and every evening. Had it not been for Skype we wouldn’t have been able to do that. Instead, we would have had either the very high cost of using a cell phone from Mexico, or the hassle of having to find, buy and then find a place to use phone cards. Phone cards aren’t too expensive, but when you’re staying with a host family, as my wife was, then you don’t want to tie up their phone every evening (and it’s not private). And even at the lower rates of phone cards, it’s still expensive when you’re talking for twenty minutes at a time. And that call before I went to work in the mornings would have been out of the question.
My wife made calls from Oaxaca, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende and Cuernavaca. Some signals were better than others, but we always had a connection. Once in a while a call would be dropped, but then you just call right back (it’s free). We found that if we didn’t have a good connection, then we could call again and it would often improve.
She also got to call her dad, who has Skype, and her mom and my mom, who don’t even have computers. The cost for the moms’ calls was minimal.
The best part — okay, free is the best part – is that we could SEE each other. Her laptop has a built in camera and my desktop has a small Logitech camera sitting beside it. Sometimes the picture could have been better, but when you’re apart for 7 weeks it’s really really nice to be able to see each other.
The sound quality is good. You’ve got a little bit of that “two way interuptus” where you can’t both talk at the same time, but that’s no big deal.
I absolutely without a single qualm endorse Skype. It’s easy to set up, easy to use and … did I mention it’s FREE?
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