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Yesterday, unable to concentrate from the outside noise of the men working on our house, Ken, J, and I (W is visiting his grandmother) packed up for the day and vacated to “quieter” quarters.

It didn’t take long to realize that quiet is a very relative term when you have a bored five-year-old on your hands, so Ken and I took turns coming up with activities for him to do and letting the other try to work or read.

During one of the two times J and I went walking through Walmart yesterday, I picked up the Skype phone that I’d been looking at for a while. It’s cute as can be and looks a LOT like a real telephone, although it weighs next to nothing, which makes it great for traveling…it even has it’s own travel bag!

Although we were using Panera’s as our main base and I LOVE their free WiFi, I didn’t get the phone set up until this morning, when I found out the best thing about it. Sound quality is amazing!

If you’ve read this blog for very long, you know that I love new technology. It wasn’t long after Vonage came out that I had their system hooked up to my computer, A few months later, I got rid of my land line for good, and I’ve never looked back.

Last year the batteries on our old cordless phone system (that I loved) got so bad that I couldn’t finish a single phone call without the battery dying in the middle of it. Reluctantly, since our old system and replacement batteries weren’t being made anymore, we purchased a new phone.

I like our new phone okay. I miss some of the extras we had on the old one, but the one thing that really drives me up the wall is that the new phone doesn’t give a warning when its batteries are about to die. Okay, two things that drive me up the wall, although they’re related in a way. It doesn’t sit in the cradle snugly, so if it’s knocked or jarred, the phone falls off the charger…which means that often I’ll answer the phone and have no idea that it didn’t charge until it suddenly cuts off in the middle of a conversation. ARRRGH!!!

So I purchased the Skype phone! And already, after two phone calls, I’ve fallen in love with it. Sure, it’s wired, it connects to the computer via a usb port, and I’d love if it was wireless, but the cord wraps around the phone, completely hidden from sight when it’s not in use. It’s not out waiting to get tripped over or to tempt a 5 year old into wrapping his shirt up in it, and then deciding that the fastest way to get the shirt unwrapped and stay out of trouble is by cutting the cord (which he did with my speakers)!?! He has such an innocent face too!

By the way, there is a wireless one available from Amazon, and now I’m considering returning this one and getting it instead…or getting both…hmmm, wonder if I could convince Ken I need two Skype phones along with a new cell phone (with WiFi) I’m trying to talk him into? Nah, probably not.

The worst part of using the phone was trying to get the drivers set up. Vista drivers don’t come with the phone, they have to be downloaded, and Philips website is not the easiest to find your way around. Finally after uploading 2 sets of drivers, I found the right ones. If you decide to check out the phone and you have Vista, here’s a link to the support page. I had to go to the /DI page to get the correct drivers, after downloading the others that I was told to when I bought the phone.

So why am I writing about a telephone? Other than the fact that if you’re not on Skype, you should be.

I have three chat programs on my computer:

Gtalk is IM stripped down to it’s essentials and for that reason I love it!

I stopped using the older IMs years ago when I realized that by not having them open when I signed on to my computer, I could greatly reduce the start-up time. Not signing in meant that I forgot about them though, so it wasn’t long until they were gone entirely.

Well, that’s actually true for all but ICQ, which I stopped using when they took away the early adopter number I’d first been assigned and gave it to someone else, after I’d been a member for about 3 years! Complaints were answered by automated responses, and a search at the time showed that a lot of people who’d joined when ICQ was first starting had been having the same thing happen. I didn’t have the patience to make all my friends revise my ICQ number every few years at ICQ’s whim, so I stopped using them for good.

Twitter is, well, Twitter. It’s a dozen chats at once, all in comments of 140 characters or less.

And then there’s Skype. Forget about VOIP (voice over internet protocol, in other words, turning your internet into a telephone service) for a moment, Skype’s text chat is worth the download even if you never hook a headset up.

Have a group of friends you want to hang out with? Create a Skype group chat and you can talk to your heart’s content.

But what if those friends live in different time zones so only a few of you are ever on at the same time, but you still want to have a group discussion? No problem. Once you’re part of a group, as long as you don’t “leave the chat” (actually remove yourself as a participant in that discussion), even if you close the chat or turn off your computer and don’t sign in for days, when you come back, you’ll be able to see all that was said while you were gone, going all the way back to the point where you joined the chat originally if you need to see it.

By the way, if you sign up on Skype and want to check chatting out, I’ve convinced a few other bloggers to join me in a group chat…come join the fun!

Bloggers in the chat so far include:

Allan Cockerill of Coffee with Allan Cockerill: he writes about Facebook, relationships, news, and life as the only man in a family with 4 daughters.

Ange Recchia of Buzzing with Ange: she writes articles about personal development and emotional intelligence and how you don’t have to be stuck in a 9-5 job to survive.

Marc of The Incurable Romantic: he and his wife write real talk about all areas of relationships, from sex to abuse to pure love and the language of flowers. Marc is also the author of techne-eikon, a blog about Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing.

Christine of mousewords: she writes and draws (check out her pictures) about being a Christian, writer, artist, web designer, and survivor of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Want your name added to the list of bloggers? Join the chat and send me a note with a link and description of your blog. Blogs should be G rated, PG at the very most so no one has to worry about clicking on a link.