Skype and Gizmo

I have been using Skype and Skype Out extensively to communicate with friends and relatives abroad for the last two years.

Unless my friends and relatives have Skype account and be online, I would not able to call and communicate for them for free. The only possibility in this kind of situation was to call their landline or mobile numbers. Then, I need to have some credits in my Skype Out.

Calling international numbers with Skype Out is indeed cheaper compared to other VoIP services. However, one of the challenges is put the credit in my Skype account. Once, I used my European credit card. The process was fast and easy, but I needed to pay quite a lot of luxury tax. Now, I use my Asian credit card. In the beginning, it took quite a while for Skype to trust a credit card from this particular country, but finally after several time of transactions with the same card, the process becomes easier for a trusted customer :). Using this Asian card does not cost me extra for a luxury tax. Yet, I still have to pay to make a call using Skype Out.

Recently, I found Gizmo that offers similar services as Skype. Gizmo indeed requires my friends and relatives to have Gizmo account. This is indeed a good promotion efforts of Gizmo. Gizmo also has Gizmo Out service that enables you to call landline as well as mobile numbers of non-Gizmo users. Leaving message at Gizmo is also more convenient because the message will be forwarded to your e-mail that you can access anywhere even with your mobile phone.

There is also an attractive service offered by Gizmo Project that makes me think to use Gizmo more often than Skype nowadays. If my friends and relatives are Gizmo users and they put their landline and mobile numbers in their profiles, I can call to these numbers for FREE.
Isn't that wonderful?
(Note: you need to check the list of countries where you can call their landline and/or mobile numbers)

This actually creates a win-win situation for Gizmo as well as its users. They can get our data for free and we can use their call service for free as well.

One thing to remember
When you use Skype, don't ever open your Gizmo or vice versa, because either one of the programs will not work (even in my Apple).