Benefits of Skype

My best friends and I grew up doing everything together.  At any given point in time we could be found at one of our houses, playing the newest board game we were inventing.  Or perhaps we would be at an empty park, fighting Airsoft wars with plastic pellet-firing guns.  Other times, we could be hidden at a nearby forest, building a secret hideout.  Unfortunately, all of our activities ceased when we all moved to different states.  Now, it is difficult to talk to, much less spend time with, each other.  However, there is a technology that lets us talk to one another and even see whoever we are talking to: Skype.  Because Skype has enabled us to maintain our friendships even though we live in different states, Skype is a very beneficial technology.

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                Right now, you might be wanting to ask me “What is Skype?”  Skype is a VoIP service that lets you communicate for free with anyone else who has Skype as well.  It lets you do three major things: type messages, talk and listen to each other, and see each other through real-time video.  The instant messaging system is full featured, letting you edit your last message and send a vast array of emoticons.  Just recently I found out that not only does Skype provide the emoticons that show up in the chat window, but they also have quite a few hidden ones as well.  The voice calling also surpasses the basic features and lets you have a group call with up to 25 people.  You can even call landlines and assign a phone number to your Skype account so that landlines can call it, also these two features cost money to use.  The last major component of Skype is video chat.  Although one on one video chat is free, you have to pay for a subscription to be able to use the videoconferencing feature.

                Skype also has a few other features that are fairly useful; the biggest ones are the abilities to share files and to share screens.  While you are in a chat with someone, you have the option of sending a file to them.  I have mainly used this feature to quickly send pictures to my friends, but it can also be used for sharing Word documents or any other small files.  The other nifty feature, screen sharing, gives you an easy way to show someone else what is on your screen, providing a great way to demonstrate how to do something or to just show what your desktop looks like.

                Now that you understand what Skype is, I can explain just how useful it is to me.  As I explained in the beginning of this post, I was extremely close to my friends.  Before we moved away, I would sometimes talk to them on Skype when one of us was on a trip.  However, since I knew I would see them after the trip was over, it was not very urgent.  On the other hand, now that I know that, if I do ever meet up with them, it will not be anytime soon, using Skype to talk to them seems necessary.  I really look forward to the “Daniel Reimer is online” pop-up, because I know that I’ll be able to talk to one of my best friends again, to hear his voice and laugh with him.  Once more we’ll be able to tell each other how we’ve been and how hard the classes are, and just talk about what we used to talk about.  Or, when one of them logs on while I am in the library and need to be quiet, we can use the instant messaging to just type to each other.  Either way, I get to communicate with my friends and maintain our friendship.

                My friends and I don’t use Skype only to talk, though.  When we grew older, we started playing a lot of computer games together.  One time, because most of our parents worked at a small, nearby college, we were even able to bring our laptops to the library in the middle of the night and use the internet connection there to play games late into the morning.  Now, although we can’t sneak into the library together anymore, we still sometimes play computer games online with each other.  When we do, we all call each other on Skype first.  That way, while we’re playing we can discuss strategies, reveal enemy positions, or laugh at the hilarious situation that had just developed.

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                There have been some bad side effects of having Skype, though.  When I’m trying to do homework, is suddenly becomes much more tempting to check Skype every minute to find someone to talk to, and the pop-up informing me that one of my friends logged on is usually a big enough distraction to start us on a 30 minute chat that, although entertaining, does not help with the schoolwork that is due an hour later.  To avoid this happening more, I’m going to have to learn to log off Skype whenever I have important work to do. 

Oh, wait, it looks like Kevin is online now.  I have to go!