It rhymes with ripe and type

Last night I my made my first ever VoIP call (using Skype). I found it to be a pretty impressive system, once I'd worked out the correct combination of microphones/headphones that I needed to plug in at my end. For info, the laptop's internal mike works fine, but headphones are useful for preventing an echo at the other end.

Several advantages were immediately apparent:
- It's free to call other Skype users
- The sound quality of the other person(s) is noticeably clearer than when using a standard phone
- I was able to speak to my sister and my brother-in-law at the same time
- You can do instant messaging at the same time

It's true that you can achieve most of these things using other methods and it does have a disadvantage in that it's not so easy to walk around the room at the same time as making the call, but I think it's worth it for the better sound quality.

We had a small discussion in the pub last night about how to pronounce Skype. I was right (though I suspect I may have been being wound up). I checked in their Support section :-)

Now all I need is to know more people that use it too...