The title sounds like a pair of good buddies or maybe a feel good movie, but instead, they are phone services. Let me tell you about my experiences with both of these. If you were afraid to use “internet telephony” due to bad experiences with things such as Dialpad from the good old days, let me assure you these are no Dialpad services.

Skype is a free and pay service. With the free service you can call computer to computer only. The pay service is computer to telephone. The free service allows one person to add other Skype users into their buddy list and call them whenever they are online. The communication is crystal clear. You may wonder how I did it, but my sister and I “talked” on Skype for seven (7) hours on Sunday. Let me explain.

I called her using Skype which is a voice only service. I then fired up MSN Messenger and turned on my webcam and she did likewise. Now we could talk and see each other. One thing we did was watch the Porter Wagoner show together. I put my webcam on the back of the couch, pointed it towards my 60” TV and we watched the show together! How is that for creative? We visited with each others cats and saw new additions to our houses. It was quite fun. I did drop connection twice, but I am on a laptop with wireless connectivity and I was able to call her back immediately. We once lasted three hours without disconnecting! Pretty impressive if you ask me.

The Skype pay service is about two cents a minute to call many countries around the world. You put money into an account on the site and the money is withdrawn as you talk. I have not used the pay service, but based on the free version, I can recommend it.

Lingo is a pay service. It is an actual box that you get delivered via UPS. You hook it up between your computer and cable or DSL modem and plug in your telephone. It uses VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to work. I had a little trouble with getting it hooked up as I have a wireless router and I do not read instructions. Once I did, it was a breeze. I talked on it using my cordless phone for about 90 minutes. There was one pause for about 20 seconds. Other than that glitch, the call was flawless and crystal clear. It sounded as good as any landline call.

How much is it? I knew you would ask that and I am glad you did. First, I want to tell you I have SBC as my carrier. For local service with no bells or whistles, I pay over $43.00 a month! My Lingo bill will be $22.09 per month and it has ALL the bells and whistles and long distance too! I can call all over America, Canada, Mexico, UK, Europe, Moscow, parts of South America, Australia and more and I pay $22.09 a month total! Can you beat that? Maybe you can, but I still love it! I am saying goodbye to SBC!

Have you tried these services or Vonage or any others? If so, let me know what you think. I’ll update you in the future as to my state of happiness with the service. So far, I am very happy. Write to me and thanks for reading. Take care of yourself and until next time, happy calling!