Huzzah! Skype Answers My Prayers!
Skype made some wonderful announcements today, giving this user (and undoubtedly, countless more) exactly what he wanted. Skype announced an unlimited calling plan for the United States and Canada, just $30 a year ($15 if you sign up before the end of January), one of the best, if not the best, rates for unlimited US calling. Combined with SkypeIn, which lets you receive calls, SkypeOut+SkypeIn+Skype Voicemail costs just $68 a year, making it a damn cheap way to make phone calls.
Me happy boy.
The other thing Skype did was release a new mobile version of their software. The new Skype Beta for Pocket PC and Windows Mobile Smartphones isn’t perfect, but it does address almost every major issue affecting owners of those devices. The Smartphone version is new, and removes the requirement for some nasty hacking to get Skype running on those phones, and the Pocket PC version requires much more modest processors, including the one on my own T-Mobile MDA.
There are issues. I’m glad there’s a Smartphone version, because the Pocket PC version does not run stable on my device, no matter how much I overclock it or tweak the settings. The program crashes, has no button to reconnect, has weird issues calling specific numbers, among other problems. The Smartphone version appears to work beautifully on my wife’s T-Mobile SDA (although it didn’t ring when I just got a call), so I’ll be using that as my new primary house phone.
