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What we’ve got is a simple bit of software we want to give you. It’ll let you make free calls to your friends all over the world. And we don’t want any money for it. It’s free.
You could think of us as the big, free Internet telephony company. We prefer to think of ourselves as a big group hug, even a present. Yes… that’s it… we’re a present… but without the ribbon."
Skype is quick and easy to get started with. Download, register, install, plug in your headset, speakers or USB phone and start calling your friends. The calls have excellent sound quality and are highly secure with end-to-end encryption. You don’t even need to configure your firewall or router or any other networking gear.
Call regular phone numbers If there weren’t enough ways for you to contact your friends, there is a little thing called SkypeOut. It lets you make calls to old-fashioned phone numbers all around the world. Landlines, mobile phones...it works with almost all of them. SkypeOut is not free but it is pretty cheap.
Sharing information Skype to Skype calls aren't the only thing that's free. Skype also allows free file transfers. Since most things you want your friends to see tend to be rather large, Skype have made their file transfer work with all the file sizes your operating system can handle. For most people, that’s between 2 or 4 gigabytes. It works from Windows to Mac to Linux and the other way around.
Keeping things secure When it comes to talking, instant messaging or transferring files, Skype have gone to great lengths to make it secure. Skype automatically encrypts everything before sending it through the internet. Likewise, on arrival everything is decrypted on-the-spot and presented as crystal clear speak, text or a file transfer nobody can intercept.
Sounds good All the security in the world wouldn’t matter, though, if you couldn’t hear the other person. With Skype, you can. They’re working with the very best in the industry to provide a sound quality far superior to what you’re used to from ordinary telephones. With normal telephones you can only hear sounds from 300 Hz to 3 kHz. Not so with Skype; it utilises the whole spectrum, from the lowest hum to the highest screetch. In other words: ‘F’ and ‘S’ will sound like the two different letters they were meant to, and in the end you will be able to have a much more natural conversation.
Finding friends Searching for those long-lost relatives or just somebody to have a quick chat with is also part of what Skype is all about. The Global User Directory is a giant phonebook of all the people who use Skype. You can use it to search for people you’d like to talk to, people who have the same birthday or people who just happen to live in the same street as you.
Chatting with Skype You can, of course, also send instant messages with Skype. That’s nice for when you’re talking about a website and you want to send that really long address or if you’re writing a song. Either way, you can send one of those little smiley faces along with your message. Smile to the world and the world smiles back.
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And it doesn’t just work on Windows, like some other software you may know of. Skype is also for Mac OS X, Linux and PDAs using Pocket PC, with a native look and feel for each platform. Talking, sending instant messages or even file transfers work between different platforms like a charm. 
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