Use Skype to make Free Video Calls:

• www.VideoCall4Free.com

Feb 12, 2005

In my never ending search to find ways to use Skype, I decided to try it on a Pocket PC (PPC) and see how it performed as a Wireless Internet.  Of course I expect you to say "Why?"  The answer... because I can...

Actually, I travel for business and I would like a way to use my Pocket PC to make or receive Skype Calls when I am at an airport, hotspot, my favorite restaurant in Milwaukee (Hi Steph!), friends homes, my client site that is wireless enabled and of course in my own home.  This way anyone can reach me or I can IM anyone right from my PPC.  I did a review in Dec of several Pocket PC's to see how well they performed with Skype and if they could be used as a Video Call device so I could use it with my daughter, family and friends.  Also because... I can.  As Cell phones are already moving towards being Skype enabled (check out our news page) I expect that we will see specific Skype enabled wireless devices, much like an iPod that are focused at wireless Skype users.  Most of these will be Cell phones, but some of the PDA vendors I am sure will do the same so watch out for "Skype enabled" devices for just this purpose.  I am also pestering one of the Pocket PC vendors I have some influence with to improve a couple things and ship the units with Skype.

Bottom line is that the supported Pocket PC's, ones that have 400Mhz or better processors running PPC 2003 work just fine with Skype.  I received calls from people all over the world and found that if you use a wired headset and turn the volume down one tick from high, they worked fairly well.  The Toshiba performed the best with or without a headset.

So I went the next step and tried using Skype along with MS Portrait, a PPC application from Microsoft that provides Video Call functionality.  I also loaded up MSN Messenger to see what I could do.  You can read my article in detail about this evaluation at:

• Using a Pocket PC as a Video Call device or a Wireless Internet Phone

In short, what I found was that the PPC is still a little under powered to run all these applications at once.  Though you can run Skype and MSN Messenger at the same time, they would rarely be used simultaneously.  If you start a Skype call, anything else you do will be dog slow even on a 624Mhz PPC.  If you want to do video then only use MS Portrait as this is even more taxing and using any other application while MS Portrait is being used is painful  Video of course takes horsepower and the PPC is still only a single task device when it comes to audio and video, but MS Portrait did do an 'OK' job at audio along with mediocre video in my Video Call tests.  It did work, but I would say it is still cutting edge and needs a fair amount of improvement in PPC horsepower, more camera improvements and get away from the TERRIBLE SSD cameras as they pop out way too easy.  A note to the PPC camera vendors - Go back to CF cameras - please!

Conclusion:

So why this article?  One, to tell you that Skype indeed works on the PPC with a good headset and two, is that I found no difference in quality between the 400Mhz units and the newer 624Mhz units as far as Skype goes.  The iPaq 6315 PPC Phone performed the worst, but it is a much slower processor.  Watch out for HP's newer PPC phones !  They should ROCK !  Of course more horsepower is needed if you want more things running and the device to be responsive.  So go on eBay and get yourself a used PPC that is 400Mhz X-Scale processor and give it try before investing in a new Pocket PC.

send me your comments:  

MG