Skype is a great service.  While it’s future path has seemed a bit uncertain lately, due to various ownership and IP issues, I bet that it will survive and hopefully even give Google Voice a bit of serious self-supporting competition.  If you’ve ever watched listened to any of Leo LaPorte’s fantastic podcasts at www.TWiT.tv or watched the live video feed at live.TWiT.tv (coming soon to a television near you), you know how great the audio and video quality of Skype calls can be.  (Feel free to eMail Leo@TWiT.tv and encourage him to have someone from www.GoogleVoiceSecrets.com on This Week in Google and/or This Week in Tech.J)

Skype is VOIP, so the quality is subject to network issues and especially the quality of the connection at both ends.  On the other hand, most of my Skype-to-Skype calls sound noticeably better than regular, hard-wired, landline calls.

So why am I writing about Skype here?

(1) I added a comment to an earlier article of mine, pointing out the benefit of being able to use Google Voice with Gizmo5 in order to be able to make free phone calls from Wi-Fi enabled airplanes:
http://www.googlevoicesecrets.com/make-and-receive-google-voice-calls-directly

(2) Bruce Wagner pointed out that Oprah made a Skype call from a Virgin America flight earlier this year:
http://www.virginamerica.com/va/press/2009/May/Virgin_America_First_Airline_to_Offer_Fleetwide_WiFi.html

(3) I replied with a comparison of Oprah’s impressive, flashy video call and what most of us really would like as our next step up in connectivity.

That reply started to include a detailed breakdown of the pluses, minuses and costs of using Skype that got to be longer than my original reply itself and seemed like it might be of general interest to more readers that just the ones that drill down into the comments section of old articles, so I am posting it as a stand-alone article here.

To call real phones with Skype, you either need a (cancelable) subscription to Skype ($3 per month gets you voicemail and unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada) or you will need to buy Skype Credit for outgoing calls to almost all countries worldwide.  The drawback with Skype Credit is that the smallest amount that you can buy is $10.  The unlimited outgoing calling portion of the subscription used to be known as SkypeOut and used to cost around $3 per month (without voicemail).  In order to receive calls from real phones, you will need to get an “online number”.  I think that that is a terrible name for the service – if your colleagues are online, they can already call you for free.  The purpose of an “online number” is to allow people that are offline to be able to call you, using regular phones.  An “online number” currently costs $60 per year and does NOT include voicemail!  (Two years ago, it was known as SkypeIn, cost $30 per year and did include voicemail!)

Why would you need voicemail on an outgoing calling system, but not on an incoming phone line?  It is available separately for your incoming line, for an extra charge ($20 per year).

For my business, all I needed was a nice sounding incoming business number with voicemail.  If I didn’t answer the call when it came in, I could call my customers back on my regular landlines.

Fortunately, there is a “Trick”.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure who’s “Tricking” who here.  J  Most places on Skype’s site which refer to buying an “online number” or voicemail have a link telling you that you can “Save with a subscription”.  What does that mean?

For $36 per year ($3 per month), you can unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada and voicemail for an entire year.  You can also buy and “online number” for incoming calls for 50% off, which would work out to $30 per year.  All totaled, you’d have everything that you need to make and receive phone calls on your computer, including voicemail, for $66 per year.

This is comparable to what full-service customers of Skype have been paying for the past four years for unlimited incoming calls, with voicemail and unlimited outgoing calls to the U.S. and Canada.

My current complaint is that all I really want from them today is unlimited incoming calls and voicemail.  That used to cost me $30 per year.  Today, it would cost $80 per year, unless I knew the “trick” of getting a basic subscription, adding unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada and bringing my actual cost down to $66 per year.

Of course, the subscription costs $3 per month, billed monthly.  There are also a number of “answering machine” add-on programs for Skype that will give you VoiceMail-like functionality, if your computer is turned all of the time (and all goes well).  Some are freeware and/or have freeware junior versions.  The one that I have the most experience with is PrettyMay, but I haven’t tried their paid version or upgraded their free version in over a year.  Hypothetically, you could sign up for a Skype subscription for $3, get an “online number” for $30 for a full year, cancel your Skype subscription (your Skype account and “online number” will continue to work just fine) and try out a third-party program as an alternative to Skype’s voicemail.  Your Net Cost?  As little as $33 per year.  Maybe that’s the real “Trick”, but it’s also a compromise.

$66 per year was an unbelievable deal before MagicJack came along offering phone service for $40 for the first year and $20 for each year after that (assuming that their prices stay steady and that they stay in business).  Bruce Wagner is the expert on all things MagicJack and I’m hoping that he’ll write up an overview of MagicJack for us sometime soon.  (Bruce was also the first person to tell me about Skype, GrandCentral and a number of other telephony services.  He has his experts that he talks to, but he is my expert.  You can read Bruce’s insights into every subject under the sun (and then some) at http://brucewagner.posterous.com/.)

www.GoogleVoiceSecrets.com needs to do another article discussing the specialized hardware that you may want to buy to use with Skype or Gizmo5.  The most important single item that you can get is a basic wired headset with a boom microphone.  I find that the $7 ones from MicroCenter work just fine.  The next step up is an adapter to let you plug in a real telephone to your computer.  I have had a $60 one from D-Link for the past two years.  It’s great when it works, but I find that it’s software is very flakey.  Also, it’s Skype-only.  (I’m sure that this is only a software issue.)  There are also stand-alone Skype phones that work with Wi-Fi connections.  Now that Gizmo5 is a part of Google, I’m sure that most hardware manufacturers will be making sure that their devices are compatible with both Skype and Gizmo5.  I’ve even seen drivers for sale that will let you use your MagicJack hardware with Skype and Gizmo5.

Of course, all of that brings us back to MagicJack and three of its best points (over and above the price):

(1) The MagicJack hardware does allow you to plug in a “real phone” right out of the box.

(2) MagicJack is possibly the simplest system for non-techies to set up themselves.

(3) The sound quality on MagicJack is also very good (subject to the normal amount of VOIP related dropouts).  For households with a computer that’s turned on 24/7, MagicJack means that there’s probably no reason to ever go with Vonage or Comcast Digital Voice.  (I would love it if an organization like Consumer Reports really compared MagicJack, Vonage, Comcast Digital Voice, Skype, Gizmo5 and other major VOIP options under controlled conditions and publish the results for everyone to see.)

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

I’m a big believer in old-fashioned phone technology.  Whenever possible, I want my calls to be to and from landlines using wired phones.  Likewise, I don’t want to carry on a serious conversation on a speakerphone.  One of the things that I like best about Google Voice is that my phone calls ultimately end up on my real phones.

Most of the time, this is great, but sometimes we are already using our computer and we’d just like to be able to use it as a phone as well.  (Maybe you are using a laptop computer and have a Wi-Fi connection to the internet, but no cellular phone reception.)  “That’s what Skype is for.”  True, but tying your Skype account to your Google Voice account requires you to buy a SkypeIn account.  (i.e. a real phone number for between $24 and $60 per year.)  There is a better answer:

Gizmo

Gizmo is a lot like Skype.  (I’ll leave it for someone else with the time and interested to do a good compare and contrast review of both services.)  Gizmo, like Skype, requires you to install a small program that connects to the internet and uses your computer’s microphone and speakers in order to become a telephone.  The critical difference is that Gizmo gives you a SIP number.  While a SIP number is not a regular phone number that can be directly dialed, it is a telephone industry standard for connecting telephony devices.  The way that that helps us here is that Google Voice will allow you to use your Gizmo number as one the phones on your account.  (Unfortunately, not the only phone on your account, but that probably has a lot to do with their current FCC controversies.)

There are other good reasons why you may want to add Gizmo to your Google Voice Account.  Maybe you don’t have a cellular phone, but take your NetBook everywhere that you go.  Maybe you don’t like using up your cellular phone minutes when you don’t have to.  You want to keep using your Google Voice account, even when traveling outside the U.S.  You might like some of Gizmo’s other features.  (Please feel encouraged to add your reasons to the comments at the end of this article.)

How to add Gizmo to your Google Voice account:

First, go to the official Gizmo site www.Gizmo5.com, then download and install the Gizmo client for your computer.  (They have versions for Windows, Mac, Linux, Nokia Tablets and other mobile devices.)  The installation process will take you through setting up a free account and assigning you a free SIP number.)

Second, tell Google Voice that you are adding another phone to your account.  Choose “Gizmo” as the phone type and enter your SIP number.  (Gizmo: Adding a Gizmo number (from Google Voice Help))

You’re ready to go!

Steven (at) GoogleVoiceSecrets.com

Here’s an extra credit question for the readers that I am wondering about – if you already have a SIP number that you are using with something else (like Asterisk, the open-source PBX), can you tell Google Voice that it is a “Gizmo” phone and have it work the way that you’d want it to?