VoIP and Mac OS X: a short primer and some hands-on experience – part 1
You may have missed this simple 4-letters word – VoIP, that is Voice over IP, which essentially means phone talking through the Net.
In case you didn’t miss it, you may already have some experience on it, just like I do.
In any case, you may find some interesting tips reading through this page.
VoIP, thanks to newer software isn’t just about cheap talking, there’s more to it than just talking…
Skype is the main player in this field, period.
If you don’t have it, just go & download it: it’s a 7 MB .DMG file, you can download for free from Skype web site.
Get here the latest version for Mac OS X along with a bonus Dashboard Widget that allows calling & answering from DashBoard.
If you’re new to Skype, you’ll need to set up an account, which is a straightforward task and is FREE.
Once you set your username and password you’re ready to call for FREE anyone with a Skype account using a computer somewhere in the world, somewhere in the Net.
Discounted rates are available for regular phone calls, that is calling from a computer (Mac, PC with Windows of Pocket PC) to a phone, be it at home or a cellular one.
With Skype you can chat too with other Skype users, either Mac or Windows users, but, more important, you can send and receive files to and from your computer.
This is oftenly a misregarded feature but it allows you to move even very large files from one computer to another, without taking care of e-mail attachment limits or platform compatibility problems.
In fact, I recently used Skype’s file transfer feature to pass a 80 Megabytes zip-compressed PDF file from my Mac to a Windows PC on the same LAN.
No directory/folders sharing, no user permissions to give to someone you really don’t trust and no problem at all with multi-platform issues.
Just call the guy on Skype and start sending the file.
