Looking into Skype I found that it is truely a great program with some neat features.  Skype allows a person to use a program (no harder to use than any messenger program like AIM or others) to call other people and talk over the Internet at a whopping rate of 'free'. 

See this article on businessEvolved concerning Skype versus Vonage style VoIP products.

Yahoo tried recently in their beta release of their popular messenger to mimic the Skype style calling feature, but even though this is a beta release it still is just the same microphone chat they have always had dressed up a little better.  The quality is still only half that of Skype. 

I have been having issues talking to family and friends across Yahoo for a while.  Many times my voice would start sounding deep and drawn out, or someone would only hear growling noises when I talked.  Skype does to Internet phone what Google has done to search engines - set a standard.  One thing to note, Skype is not revelotionary in any respect...it just seems to get it right.

Check Skype out at www.skype.com

- Tonya Welling