by Rae Saeed

Created on: November 18, 2009

For College/Universaty Students:

Students who've travelled miles, even over seas often become super stressed with the new overwhelming responsibility of College and University. Of course, the transition is twice as hard for students who aren't able to see their loved ones everyday.
With programs like Skype, anyone around the world can chat with family and friends through the Web, for free.

According to it's official website, Skype can be used to make video and voice calls, as well as sharing files with other users. This program also may be used to make low-cost calls to landlines. Skype can also be added to your mobile, Playstation 3, WiFi and cordless phones. Why not take the magic with you?

Users can do so much more with Skype. Users can send text messages directly from it and forward an online call right to their cell or set up an online contact number.

Are there other programs like Skype that are just as good? It's possible that Skype may not be the best of the best, but it's certainly the first choice.
Applications like Gmail Voice and Video chat require a browser plug-in, according to Googler, Justin Uberti of lifehacker.com.

Another video chat source is iChat, which is evidently only exclusive to Mac OSX users, which benefits no one who does not own a Macbook. iChat is also a tad complicated and almost impossible to use.

VSee , a free video application, offers many video-chat options and is also designed as a collaboration tool. The pro of VSee is that it can also support video chats with up to four people simultaneously. The downside is, only the paid version supports up to eight at a time.
You have to think about this though: VSee only works for Windows and you have to pay to have eight people in the video conference all at once.

Lifehacker.com created a poll on the most popular video program. Fifty-Two percent of users prefer Skype, while only one percent care for VSee.

Skype is free and works on any computer and requires nothing extra whatsoever, except a camera, of course.

The same goes for anyone else who needs to talk to a loved who happens to be half-way across the country.

Talking to somone on the phone is one thing. However, when you see your family and friends who live so far away it feels great yes?

Skype costs you nothing but a webcam and a mic and most folks have that already. So go ahead, video chat for hours on end if need be at no extra price.

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