Skype

Why don't more Americans use Skype? Everyone I know in Europe uses Skype all the time, and almost nobody I know in the US has ever heard of it (techy friends excluded). This is a must-have application and completely free, and very easy to use. What does it do? Skype lets you use your computer

as a telephone (if you have a mike and speakers, or a headset). You can phone anyone else who has Skype for free - that is: no money at all. If you telephone people and have to pay for the call, use Skype. Period.

If you telephone people who don't have a computer, or you want to call a "normal" phone, you can purchase a few dollar's worth of credit that will last for ages! I use Skype all the time and am still using the 10 Euros (roughly 10 dollars) I purchased in 2005! And if you don't want to phone someone, you can use the chat feature to send messages back and forth - like email with instant gratification. If you have a web cam, Skype can do video calls too. But since I can't imagine anything worse that video phone calls I don't really care.

I could have said that Skype is a VOIP client but I figured that anyone who knows what VOIP stands for (Voice Over Internet Protocol), you know what Skype is.