Did Skype’s total failure last holiday season get you worried? Are you tired of Skype’s generally poor quality even at its free price-tag? Afraid of what Microsoft might do with Skype? According to ZDNet’s own unscientific survey, 41% of you are less likely to use MS-Skype.
So, what can you use instead of Skype? Here’s my own personal list of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video-conferencing favorites. I’ve used all of these at one time or another and I was happy with the results. I also continue to use two of these programs.
What the programs I like all have in common is that they use open-protocols. These are SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) standard and Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). This means if you have SIP or XMPP client you can use it to talk to anyone using a compatible client; if that is, they’re on the same VoIP network.
For example, Iptel, Ekiga.net, and ippi are all fine SIP networks, but if you’re only on one of them you can’t talk to other SIP VoIP users on the other two and vice-versa. The same is true of XMPP/Jingle networks, and, for that matter all the other VoIP networks.
Skype only appears to be universal. It’s actually just very popular. Skype uses a proprietary systems While there are ways to use Skype with other VoIP networks, such as Skype Connect to work with SIP VoIP systems and karaka Google project to create Skype/XMPP/Jingle gateways, Skype itself is designed to be closed whereas the SIP and XMPP/Jingle networks are designed to be open to anyone that uses their open protocols.
Enough of the technology, here are the programs.
I’ve used each of the following programs on a variety of operating systems including various Linux distributions, Windows XP and 7, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard. For my Internet connection, I have a 25-Megabit per second (Mbps) down and 3-Mbps up cable connection. With any voice connection, your speed is vital. While in theory you can go as low as 128 Kilobits per second (Kbps) for voice and 512-Kbps for video, in practice, I’ve found you’re better off at least double that uplink speed.
All of these programs worked well for me or I wouldn’t bother with discussing them. By this I mean I was able to talk and video-conference with people without annoying lag or latency problems.
