Voice Chat & Internet phone

By Colaihy , Sam & Friends

If you do not want to pay for your long distance phone services, instead using computers to communicate then the simple way people use is Voice Chat of Yahoo! Messenger.

To use Voice Chat you must have these simple conditions in both ends of your lines:

*  A connection to the Internet
* The latest version of Yahoo! Messenger
* A microphone, sound card, and speakers
* An active (free) Yahoo! Account
* Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME
* Microsoft Internet Explorer (4.01 or higher)


One other way is also used, as described in the excerpt below, extracted from WinXPnews.com :

  • Windows 2000 and XP users can make VoIP calls using Microsoft's NetMeeting (in XP, type conf at the Run command to start NetMeeting) if the parties on both end have it installed. You'll need a microphone and sound "card" on each computer, too. Not only can you make voice calls, you can also make video calls (if you have cameras installed on one or both computers). This is essentially free - you don't have to pay any charges to anyone to make the call.

     
  • If you want to use your computer to call a regular telephone, you'll need a service like Net2Phone. With these types of services, you have to download their software, and there are charges for calls if they're longer than a few minutes or you make more than a limited number, but the person you're calling doesn't even have to own a computer:
    http://www.winxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=030520ED-Net2Phone

     
  • There's also something called a gateway service, that lets you call from one phone to another, but the call travels over the TCP/IP (the communications protocol of the Internet) network instead of the public telephone network. These services are a little more costly and used mostly by businesses, but they're a lot less expensive than regular telco long distance charges.

Notes: The two methods known as Voice Chat and VoIP (computer to computer) may be not tơ bad if both ends use separate telephone lines. For example: Communicating with a blond from computer in an Internet Cafe in VN is not practical because many computers share only one phone line.. :))