Skype is a little piece of software that lets you make free calls to anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world. And even though the calls are free, they are really excellent quality. If you and your friends, family or business contacts are using webcams, you can also make free video calls. You can even call landlines and mobile phones at really cheap rates.

Everyone who downloads Skype for the first time can make their first call for free to over 30 global countries.

Just like instant messengers, you can also use Skype to chat with not just one person at a time, but with up to 100 people in a group chat. You can even bookmark the chat and find it later, which is handy for recurrent chats with family and business contacts.

Find people to talk to
Simply find and add contacts to your contact list, where you can see if they?re online, offline, busy or away from their computer.

Importing contacts lets you find people amongst your contacts who are already on Skype. Even if they?re not using Skype yet, you can still call your Microsoft Outlook® contacts directly from Skype.

Shared Groups is handy when your contact list is full of friends and family. You can then easily organise them by creating and managing groups of contacts. With Shared Groups, all your friends or your latest project group can stay in touch and be automatically updated when a new person joins.