I don't have Skype… but I hate to admit it. I'll eventually have to get it because colleagues always ask me to communicate with them on it. But there are two reasons why I don't have it.
The first is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype. I realize you can't trust everything you read on the Internet but this has me concerned enough to think twice before I use it. Some of the things I'm concerned about include (quoting from Wikipedia):
- Keeps chatting on the network, even when idle
- Blind trust in anything else speaking Skype
- Skype makes it hard to enforce a (corporate) security policy
- SkypeOut can be more expensive
- The continuous access pattern does not allow the disk to enter “sleep” or “idle” modes while Skype is active, even when offline
Other reasons were mentioned but these 5 are my biggest concerns.
The second reason is anecdotal: Every time someone has called me (on my landline phone) from their Skype, the quality has been low, the delay between talking has been painfully long (even on local calls), and some of the time I'm put on hands-free, which means that my voice is coming out of the computer speakers and I can hear myself talking. All of these things are very distracting to having a real conversation with someone.
I love new technology and I love to see it leveraged for better business use. But to me, Skype just isn't there yet. Right now they're on version 2.5. I'll wait a couple more versions before I look at it again.
