Check this out!! We should all be members. It works great!!

Hi Don! My sister sent me a Logitech video/microphone camera for my birthday. My first thought was, "great..another gizmo to complicate my life"..So I logged on to the "Skype" site, installed Skype, plugged in my new camera and I was done. Took a total of 5 minutes. No camera software or configuration necessary. (required 2.0 USB) A few minutes later my sister,husband and kids called on my laptop and I was able to see everyone, talk to everyone, and the funnest part was showing the kids all my cats and dogs with the camera! Much fun.

We should share our Skype info so we can chat live. My Skype name is capcortez, and I will be glad to chat with any and all. I haven't recieved my webcam yet, but I am looking forward to it. We can video conference, send files, and its FREE! Worldwide! Yes FREE!

Skype is cool and is great for family and such. I don't know if at this time it is a great replacement for your land based phone.

I have hooked up with Sun Rocket a popular VOIP. I pay $24.95 per month for phone service local and national. After a couple months when we feel really secure with it we will dump Qwest which is up to around $76 per month now and go with the yearly plan with Sun Rocket which is $199 per year. Yep, pay $199 and no phone bills for a year. That will save us over $700 per year.

They also have this super voice mail which they will email you and send you a message on your cell phone when you have a call to your home phone.

Only issue I have with VOIP would be if the power goes out... that means no high-speed internet and thus no phone. Couldn't that be a problem during a power outage? Although I suppose everyone has a cell phone also. My wife and I have been landlineless for 3 1/2 years now, using only cells since we moved to our current house. Absolutely no complaints, and with frequent checking (online) and phone discipline when needed we've never gone over our monthly minutes. Last month was the closest ever (and I thought for sure we were over) - we used 1491 minutes of 1500! Whew!!

If Skype really takes off and becomes popular, I'd imagine it won't stay free for long. Anyone remember the service that allowed free LD calls over internet modem connections? I don't even remember what the website was called... but the "free" part didn't last long.

Skype will cost extra for calls not made to other Skype members as of Jan 1, 2007.

Skype is VOIP the same as Sun Rocket, Vonage, and Time Warner digital phone service. They just go at it a different way. The other companies assume you want to use handsets like your regular phone company.

As far as the phone service going out with electrical service is a concern. We would always have a cell phone around.

Another concern that my wife brought is something that would never happen to any of you but has happened to us over the last 25 years of cable tv. If I think Deb paid the phone bill and she thinks I did we will get a nice letter from the phone company giving us 20-30 days to get the check in. With cable service "WHACK" it's off. No I don't want anyone to think we don't pay our bills on time but you consider everything.

I've been wanting to drop my land line as well but Direct TV requires a phone line to download programming. Whats weird is no phone line is needed to download programming to my Barth Direct TV receiver.. Correct me if I'm wrong as I'd love to dump my land line and just use the cell.

This is directly from the Direct TV website

quote:

Q: Do I have to connect my receiver to my phone line?
A: The system uses the phone line to transmit programming purchase information like pay-per-view movies, special season sports programming and other shows from the receiver to DIRECTV. You can choose not to connect your receiver to your phone line but an extra charge of $5 will be apply on every phone order.

Double check the info - I think all this can be ordered via the web without the $5.00 charge - but I could be wrong (for once)

When I had DishNetwork, they supposedly required a landline hooked into the receiver also. I just never did it, and they never knew the difference. I could still order pay-per-view through the receiver, and they billed me later (or not at all in a few cases). So don't keep a $40+ phone line around just for the convenience of your TV provider!

We learned about Skype at Ebay univercity. It is a free download on Ebay's site. I for the life of me can see no downside to using it. I think it would be fun and useful to have live chats with other members on this site either one on one or in groups of up to five. Think of it, being able to comunicate worldwide at no cost. The webcam fwature is another plus.

Every night Dish tells me they will charge me $5 a month if I don't plug back into the phone line. Whenever my DSL gets bad, I disconnect the dish receiver, and my DSL improves. This always happens after dinner. I suspect they are monitoring our usage during prime time. I reconnect later on and they stop hating me until next time.

We have Dish and VOIP and never had the set top box hooked up to a phone. I do pay a little more when ordering pay per view over the internet. They told me that I had to connect to a phone and I told them that I did not have a phone line. What can they do if you do not use a land line but let you not plug in.

If you have VOIP you can disconect the land line from the outside box and then plug the VOIP into a phone jack and the line will go over you house phone wires. The key is that you can not have power to the phone lines or you will damage the VOIP modem. The power to the house phone comes from the phone company so by disconecting the outside line to the box fixes the power issue.

quote:

Originally posted by bill h:
Every night Dish tells me they will charge me $5 a month if I don't plug back into the phone line.

That's bogus. Check your service contract, and if that stipulation is not mentioned then you have no obligation to be plugged in. Even if it's in your contract, call up customer service and tell them you're dropping your landline and will cancel your service before paying $5 extra per month. I bet they write off that part of the requirement before losing business.

By saying "Dish tells me" do you mean a message pops up on your receiver? If so I wonder if that's just a sensor in the receiver's phone jack, and not an actual monitoring... after all, why would they need your phone line to monitor activity when that is all done through the satellite dish?? Try plugging in a loose cable (not attached to anything) to the receiver and see if it thinks the phone line is connected.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Scalzo:
Think of it, being able to comunicate worldwide at no cost.

We've had that for awhile... e-mail. Seriously though, I don't disagree Skype is a handy tool but I doubt it will stay free forever.

How did this become a discussion on Direct TV?
I was looking for a discussion on Skype! I thought if enough of us signed on we could video conference or talk over topics, exchange files, pictures, etc. all at no cost. Only one response was on Skype, and even though that one was positive, no one else picked up the subject??