what next? got a headset a few days ago and been trailing through the vast amount of Voip clients. There are far too many to know which is good and which is not. My main use would be to call friends who are abroad. Is there such a thing as completely free calls to certain countries, or is there always a catch? trying to avoid signing up to anything that might burn me in the end

a few I've had a look at are:

Voip Buster
Voip Stunt
Sipgate
Skype
Yahoo Messenger with Voice

If anyone has a good idea of what the crack is with Voip and some advice....please point me in the right direction. cheers guys

well out of all of them, even tho you get free calls with the 2 voips, skype seems the best....so far...

but skype is only free to another pc with skype, no?

Skype Hype seems the worst out the lot.

If you want to call landlines for free in many countries and receive for free an incoming number then choose one of the VoIP Stunt type clients.

You could try Sipgate, which offers free calling between Sipgate customers and some other VoIP Customers, and also offers for no fee an incoming number.

Skype is an over rated, expensive, hyped, proprietary system.

Though nothing stopping you having them all on the system, but only use one for a paid service, and the paid service you choose is dependant if you plan to make many calls to landlines or virtually none.

If all you want to do is call other PC users, then maybe Skype will suffice, for anything else, there are better alternatives.

thanks Bex. I'd be looking to call landlines abroad. would sipgate charge for this or is it free to certain countries. Is there also a fixed amount of free minutes till the charge you or is it free without any charge at any point?

Sipgate charge for calls to landlines and mobiles, but is handy for an incoming number of any area code you choose.

VoIP Stunt offer free calls to landlines to many countries, as do VoIP Buster, SIP Discount, Internetcalls, VoIP Cheap and netappel.fr each one has slightly different countries they offer free calls to, there is some overlapping. With these you have to credit the account to make unlimited free calls, they also offer you once credited an incoming number, however they only have certain areas codes, you don't know whether or not they offer an areacode for your area, you just find out when you select you want a VoIP-In number, you either get a standard area number, or a VoIP 0560 number. Credit with these lasts about 120 days, but I'm not sure if that means 120 after last making a call, or it really only last 120 days and then you lose what you haven't used.

i am now using voip stunt in my business. when i tell people how i am talking to them they can't believe it. so far so good (i am making outgoings only)