Skype or alternatives?

moaninmick

I don't know if this is the right forum. My daughter is going to France for a year and we want to keep in contact. She will have a wireless enabled laptop with her. What is best? Skype or Googletalk or MSN messanger? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

cledor

Skype is the most popular, despite recent outages.

You could have all three services installed at the same time, but a lot depends on your contacts' preferences.

The main thing is to find a suitable broadband internet connection or free wifi hotspots.

Little_John

If she has a wired internet connection she could try vonage, its brillaint sign up in the UK and get a UK phone number just connect the box they send you to a router/internet connection and use any standard UK telephone with it.

The cost is £8 a month for unlimited calls to the UK and people calling her call a UK landline number so it is cheap for people calling her. she can take the box anywhere in the world and as long as she can connect it to the internet she will have a UK number. A freind just emigrated to australia and he signed up for vonage and people cant work it out why they phone a bolton number for him in and he is in australia.

LouPapy

Hi moaninmick,

I'm French and I contact my parents in France quite often. We tend to use msn messenger, for chat, pc to pc call and video call, I found it more interactive and more fun to use than skype or google talk.
And to phone I just use the International CallChecker form this site. Calls to France only cost 0.5p/mn.