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Communications Software Linux

Skype 1.0 For Windows Released, Updated Linux Beta 213

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-your-voip-on dept.
egjertse writes "Today Skype launches its free Skype for Windows Version 1.0 software, which includes SkypeOut, enabling Skype users to pre-pay and call any phone number in the world at highly competitive local rates. Also included in Skype 1.0 is a new file transfer feature and other software enhancements. New beta versions of Skype for Linux (Previous Slashdot Story) and Skype for Pocket PC with the SkypeOut feature are also available. Here are the release notes."
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Skype 1.0 For Windows Released, Updated Linux Beta More

Skype 1.0 For Windows Released, Updated Linux Beta

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  • Grrr (Score:4, Informative)

    by va3atc ( 715659 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:32AM (#9812043) Homepage Journal
    But doesn't work on Windows 98/ME

  • Quality (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Klar ( 522420 ) <curchin@g m a i l .com> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:32AM (#9812046) Homepage Journal
    Has anyone tried this? If so, is the sound quality high enough to bother with? Does it ever miss words or anything?

    I've had problems with other services like this in the past, but maybe they have gotten better.

    • Re:Quality (Score:3, Informative)

      by BinaryWolf ( 792555 )
      Yes I've been using it for quite some time now. The quality is excellent. Clearer than on the phone I think.
      • Hummm.. do you know if it is available in Canada? I'm getting tired of using calling card numbers to call people long distance.
        • I'm not too familiar with their newer features but I do know that you can call to anyone else in the world who is a Skype user. I've communicated many a times to Germany and other countries.
        • Canada is one of their global calling countries (can't remember the exact term, and their site is a little slow right now) - you can call out to a regular phone number in these countries for the cost of a local call.
      • I'm curious - has anyone who uses Skype frequently tried the service today? Is the service itself Slashdotted, by any chance? I was calling 123echo, and whole chunks of the sentence I was repeating were dropping off.

        I'm just curious about the quality of service today vs. a normal day when it doens't make the front page of Slashdot.
      • I'll second that. The sound quality is excellent. Price of SkypeOut calls is really low too :-)

    • Re:Quality (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:36AM (#9812109) Homepage Journal
      Yes. Sound quality is surprisingly good, but there is an unavoidable delay that comes from the latency of the Internet (which has gotten better over the years -- a ping to ftp.funet.fi gives me a faster round trip time today than a ping to www.yahoo.com gave me two years ago).

      In a nutshell, you may irritate the people you're calling, but less so than if you used a cell phone.

      • If you are calling someone on this service, and don't tell them you are using an internet connection, do you think they would notice and ask?
    • I would agree - the quality is excellent.

      However on one (and only one) occasion there was a time delay of a few seconds which really had us confused.

    • Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC did... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:39AM (#9812154)
      "I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype," Michael Powell, chairman, Federal Communications Commission, explained. "When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it's free - it's over. The world will change now inevitably."
      Fortune Magazine, 16th February 2004

      I don't see a 2/16/2004 edition of Fortune according to their archives [fortune.com] but I did find an article on 2/9/2004 which I cannot see in its entirety (see here [slashdot.org] for more bitching about that topic).
        • "I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype," Michael Powell, chairman, Federal Communications Commission, explained. "When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it's free - it's over. The world will change now inevitably."
          Fortune Magazine, 16th February 2004

        Amazing perceptive for the FCC considering some of the stuff they've done of late (media consolidation rules for one). I have to agree with h

        • Amazingly perceptive for the FCC considering some of the stuff they've done of late (media consolidation rules for one).

          Actually, Powell has been entirely consistent and frequently misunderstood. His policies and decisions come from his underlying belief in minimal regulation. This was first evident in the modifications to the FCC consolidation regulations (as an aside, many legal experts believe that the former regulations would never have stood up to court challenge and the revised version championed by

    • My fam in EU has had Skype since july 1, but then it was beta, now 1.0. Theyare very satisfied. Just have to moderate DC++ to keep quality up. Of course, over there each household gets 8 Mbits Tx rate...

    • Re:Quality (Score:4, Informative)

      by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:06AM (#9812511)
      I call Eastern Europe with Skype all the time and most times voice quality is actually BETTER than with a phone conversation. The delay is almost unnoticable. Granted my parents who live there have a DSL line (it's a 512K DSL) and so do I. I heard that people with ISDN and even 56K dial up were getting very reasonable voice quality. Over DSL however, it's like talking to somebody in the same room.
    • Yes, quality is clearer than the telephone forsure for me. (skype-skype calls). Skype-POTS should be just as clear as any telephone.

      There is a bit of latency, but nothing compared to other programs i've tryed like teamspeak.

  • How long until... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Patik ( 584959 ) * <cpatik@g m a i l . c om> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:33AM (#9812053) Homepage Journal
    ...someone develops a phone that looks and feels like a regular household portable phone, but uses Skype via your home wifi network?

  • No OS X version? (Score:3, Informative)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:34AM (#9812066) Journal

    This would be very handy to have on my Powerbook, but alas it seems no such beast exists. If it compiles under Linux, it shouldn't be too hard to do a straight port, even if it has to run under an X client instead of being a pretty Quartz app.

    Course, if they had used SWT this wouldn't be an issue.

    • Re:No OS X version? (Score:4, Informative)

      by patvan ( 234768 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:46AM (#9812254)
      Yesterday on macbidouille, they reported on this:

      "On June 16, 2004, there was an internal demonstration at Skype of the alpha version of Skype for MacOS. The alpha version worked well and the development team is working towards a beta launch of Skype for Mac. It will likely take about 2-3 months until release. When Skype for Mac is available, an email will be sent to you through Public Mind to let you know. Thanks for your patience."

    • Re:No OS X version? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by HeghmoH ( 13204 )
      This meme must die!!!!

      Aside from the standard POSIX calls, which don't include lots of things that a modern program that goes beyond the command line must do, Mac OS X and Linux are as different as can be. Although Mac OS X has an optional X11 server that can be used to porn X11 programs over, there is one other critical area where they are completely different: sound! Linux sound IO and Mac sound IO are completely different.

      Not to mention that when somebody says "Linux", they usually mean "Linux on x86",
      • Although Mac OS X has an optional X11 server that can be used to porn X11 programs over

        That has to be the funniest typo I've seen in a while. The best part being, of course, that on qwerty keyboards at least, "n" and "t" are quite far apart, making one suspect some sort of Freudian slip. Thank you!

        • Nice catch! However, I must disappoint you; I use Dvorak, where N and T are, sadly, adjacent.

          I doubt if it's a freudian slip, because I always look at porn using native Aqua programs....

  • The new spyware (Score:4, Funny)

    by dsbaha ( 798669 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:35AM (#9812074)
    I can see it now, the new spyware will work like this:

    When you make a voice call, the spyware will listen to your conversation, then start producing popups on what you say ..

    for example:

    Me: "Hi Mom"
    Spyware: *incest p0rn popups*
  • Maybe I'm just being stupid but I can't find any pricing page on their website.

  • What's all the Skype About? (Score:3, Funny)

    by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:36AM (#9812110)
    You could think of us as the big, free Internet telephony company. We prefer to think of ourselves as a big group hug, even a present. Yes... that's it... we're a present... but without the ribbon.

    ..can't ...hold ...back ...sounds like ...project kickoff meeting.

    *wharf ralf barf*

    :-@~~~~*

  • Skype (Score:3, Interesting)

    by duguk ( 589689 ) <dug@nOspam.frag.co.uk> on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:39AM (#9812166) Homepage Journal
    I've been using Skype at home for a few days now; the sound quality is adequate, and I haven't had any problems with it; its probably equal or better than the POTS.

    Plus you can log into Skype onto multiple machines, if someone tries to contact you they both ring. I'm not sure about messaging yet though!

    Still, I'll be downloading this and upgrading. I like it! Its definately worth a try out if you're interested in making phone calls. I've only tried the IP2IP connections btw, and have no idea of IP2POTS :)

    Dug

    P.S. I often make up words due to psudeoapathy.

  • We need an Open Source Skype (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sanity ( 1431 ) * on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:40AM (#9812172) Homepage Journal
    I am amazed that nobody has built an open source VoIP application, perhaps around the Speex [speex.org] codec, which employs simple UDP NAT circumvention to get around the nasty configuration issues which plague most VoIP applications.

    Until someone does, Skype, a proprietary closed protocol, but the only "zero configuration" VoIP application I know of, is likely to continue to acquire users.

  • What's been your experience with the directory listing, ie, listing yourself as wanting to chat via voice? Sounds interesting but subject to the same problems as most IMing. I loved Odigo for its international flavor and ability to match up interests. How does Skype compare to this?

  • Malware? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by cghancock01 ( 790341 )
    Is this thing not chock full of adware, spyware, malware, and all those other wares that make me wary? From the makers of Kazaa? Come on, I don' trust Kazaa as far as I can throw it!

    • Re:Malware? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dog and Pony ( 521538 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @10:58AM (#9812433)
      Not yet, which is the beauty of it all. Friends of mine were all hyped up about this a few months back, but when I saw who was behind it I chose not to go with the flow. There are lots of provisions in licenses and texts that says they are allowed to add third party stuff later on under certain circumstances. They do say you have to agree, but couple that with provisions that say that they don't need to provide you with the next version and that new versions need not be compatible I think we all see where it is heading. Add in the fact that most users simply agree to anything, and we're already there.

      I might well be wrong and they've seen the errors of their ways, but I doubt it. I'll just wait and see. It is quite possible I'll not support it simply because they've been *really* bad before and people who behave badly should not get away with it by just starting over.

      • Re:Malware? (Score:5, Informative)

        by magefile ( 776388 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @11:11AM (#9812566)
        As I understood it, these guys operated a "clean" Kazaa, and the malware only came in when Sharman Networks, or whatever it was called, took over. Am I misinformed?

        • Re:Malware? (Score:4, Informative)

          by owlstead ( 636356 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @01:05PM (#9813817)
          Nope, you are not misinformed. According to a Dutch television documentary the programmers did not want that to happen. A collegue, who handled the commercial part more or less, sold the program to an Australian company, without them knowing. Basically they were conned out of their business. After that the ads came in.

          This out the top of my head, since I don't have the documentary lying around. It was shown to me at the Copy=Right? festival of my ISP, XS4ALL (.nl).
        • Well, that makes me a bit more positive towards them, as long as they don't make the same mistake again, that is. :)

          Actually, they seem to have a business model that might work without being assholes this time too... which makes you wonder what plans they had the last time, if any. Maybe they were just a bunch of hackers hacking away at some cool stuff. =)
  • Tried the newest version on Linux, still no go for me.

    It looks nice, loads fast, but you still can't specify what device you want to use for a microphone. It automatically assumes that you are using /dev/dsp for both your soundcard and your mic. Unfortunately I have a seperate USB mic and therefore can't use Skype in Linux at all.
    I've posted this on their forums but no official response so far.

  • ...like a cordless USB phone that looks fairly normal, and... uh.. isn't $400.

    http://www.cproducts.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/ on line-store/scstore/p-DH-301281.html?E+scstore+froo gle

    Yea, found it on froogle. Have at it.
  • Awesome, a client for both Windows and Linux! That rocks! I cant wait to port this to my Treo 600! I wonder if it will work on Sprint PCS's 2.5G data network? Any J2ME coders out there wanna help with this project, it'll be uber-r33t. I cant wait until I see the look On the Sprint PCS guys face when I show him that I could just use my data minutes to, um, wait. EERG!!

    >8(
  • Where's my Asterix plugin for realtime conversion of SIP to Skype calls?

    • Rohan Mahy (co-chair IETF SIP and SIPPING Working Groups) said [theregister.co.uk]:

      "As with anybody who has technical problems with IETF protocols, I invite them to write a description of what problem they are trying to solve which they feel is not addressed by existing protocols and provide some motivation. Zennstrom has not provided any rigorous analysis or even detailed explanation of these alleged technical problems.

      "The traditional telecom folks want to reproduce an environment which is familiar to them. SIP does thi

  • Unfortunately it still crashes my Dell Axim X30. Just freezes and on reboot complains about memory corruption.

    Remember - take a full backup first using Active Sink so that you can restore from a cold reset if needed. If it works on your unit - great!
  • Why would you want to route point to point calls through a peer to peer network when you can just set up your own personal (or shared) ventrilo server and talk to anybody you want? Routing a latency-sensitive application through p2p just seems dumb.
    • I believe it does direct connect, right? Only uses p2p to find the person you're looking for? ("Hey, have you seen $PERSON? No? Could you ask your buddies for me?")
    • Because ventrilo isn't free, and has all sorts of annoying licensing issues that came about a year or so ago. Unfortunately teamspeak is going that way also according to their site, but luckily isn't yet. Skype on the other hand is free in every way.
    • It uses the fastest connection available. It only routes the calls themselves though other computers if there is no other way. If both sides are behind a NAT firewall it uses a UDP protocol. Both computers get a call request through the network (using a server or easy reachable pc) and send an UDP package to each other. One of these packages will probably be dropped by the firewall, but after that the stateless UDP protocol is accepted at both sides, and high quality/high encryption calls can be made, using
      • Hi, thanks for (potentially) clearing this up. P2P does indeed make sense for *lookup* and *rendezvous* but little or no sense for direct communication. Most of the VOIP stacks I have looked at (yeah, I forget all the obscure acronyms and spec numbers), deal a lot with how to just arrange the call in the first place...the rest is just cake.
        • Not really. P2P just means Point 2 Point. Which does exactly mean that you are talking straight to the computer you want to download wares from, or indeed the person that you want to talk to. The lookup part does and the configuration part are not specifically P2P, but they are clearly the most difficult to get right.
  • from the site:

    Latest version is:

    Skype 0.98
  • It doesn't look like 1.0 to me, it looks like Windows Beta 0.98.0.68. Somehow I think whoever posted the summary rounded up...
  • Oh, right, it's p2p for a reason.

    How simple are those USB phones in terms of setup (in Linux)? I wouldn't mind paying for one, but as long as I can still use Asterix (or just POTS), Skype isn't compelling enough to mess around with.

    And do they have a free trial? Say, 5 minutes to check sound quality, ease of use and all that?

    Yeah, I know, easy questions. But as long as the site's /.'ed ...
  • Yeah, the first one is always free. Wait until they start downloading ads.

    You think I'm kidding? Call Sprint PCS information. Not only do they charge you, they run an ad "For movie listings, times, and more, call...".

    And it's not even encrypted end to end.

  • To use separate devices for sound input/output (Score:4, Informative)

    by sonicattack ( 554038 ) on Tuesday July 27, 2004 @12:29PM (#9813428) Homepage
    As of Skype for Linux version 0.9.0.14, the options to configure the soundcard settings from inside the program are still missing.

    For those (like me) who use two different soundcards (webcam microphone + internal soundcard) for sound input and output, there's something called skype_dsp_hijacker, which uses an LD_PRELOAD trick to redirect sound I/O to another device. I wrote a small patch for this useful wrapper to enable use of separate devices.

    It's located at http://195.38.3.142/skype/ [195.38.3.142]
    Do tell me if you find it useful! :)
  • Uhhh, where are we gonna get that and why would anyone want to run anything on Windows version 1?

  • Softice (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cycleburner ( 595406 )
    Isn't this great? I was really excited to finally use the 1.0 version of Skype, only to get this notification when trying to start it: Skype is not compatible with system debuggers like Softice. And no, I didn't even have Softice running. This is the first time I encounter such a notice. Anyone else?
  • ...is this is what you want.

    SIP services traverse NAT without a problem.
    There are several VoIP provider that will let you pick your software, and/or hardware to connect to their PBX. I have been using Nikotel.com for that http://www.nikotel.com/ [nikotel.com].

    The only "good thing" about Skype seems to be that the per minute rates are slightly better than the competition. For example, where Nikotel charges 2.9c/min, Skype seems to charge 2.0c/min.

    For this price difference, I would stick with an open standard, SIP, and
  • It is worth noting that Skype has particuarly good echo cancellation. We use it at work for conferencing with another office, using just a cheap microphone and some speakers.
  • I own a Viewsonic V37 Pocket PC. I had tried the original PocketSkype, when it came out earlier this year. Using an SDIO Wi-Fi card, the speech was stuttered and worthless when picked up by a desktop PC on the same LAN.However, now that issue is resolved. The voice quality was very good, for this connection type.
    There is still about 1 second lag before the other end recieves, but it could be a result of my choice of networking hardware. Soon, I will test it with my wi-fi laptop and the Windows version of t

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