Just as I misunderstood you, you seem to have misunderstood me. With responses 3 and 4, you're extrapolating ideas that weren't in my comments. I'm not up to making this a huge tete-a-tete () but I apologize if I didn't make myself clear. Suffice to say I did not mean to imply anything that led to those responses.

As for "worked up", that wasn't meant as an accusation or anything derogatory... I'm saying it appears to me you put more work into deconstructing and analyzing the article than the points made merited.

i'm 4 of those 100million "users". i've used skype about 3 times since free calling to US/Canadian numbers was ended.

An open-source SIP client would allow the tablet to be used as a voip phone connected to asterisk or to a voip service. It would be incredibly useful.

Did Tapioca SIP and minisip both give up? Why do these projects keep stalling? bad luck, high level of difficulty, or disincentives?

You guys are funny...
I personally have no use for skype... But more poower to thoes who do!

Skype is propriertary software. Propriertary software is antisocial. One telephone that only calls to others same brand phones is antisocial. Nokia that only calls to Nokia? Motorola that only calls to Motorola? This post is wrong because have the idea that Skype is social.

«Eat **** 8000000000000000 Fly's can't be wrong»

Oh, Mary Poppins, I'm so sorry I missed this one before. I'm afraid I have to tell you you're all wrong now (Try to find a sweet song aftwerwards to make us all sing and dance and forget reality )

It's too easy to say Skype "doesnt take away anything, it only adds a new option". This would be like saying giant shopping malls outside the cities didn't take away anything, they just added new possibilities. The truth is: They caused small downtown-shops to close down and took away the possibility to shop locally, the possibility to choose. (Same goes for Microsoft and its de facto monopoly on the desktop.)

Skype isn't just another option. Skype on the N800, for example, makes it less attractive for people to invest in open VoIP clients for the device, because in some way, VoIP is there for most people. So it does take away the option to choose - again.

It's a very libertarian thing to think of new players in the market as "new options" only. In fact many of them in the long run mean less options than before. There is such a thing as a moral aspect to it. Yes, there is.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Benny, I'd buy your argument if and only if any of those 100 millions Skype users were taken from other alternatives. In the case we're talking about, they were not. They already exist. My point was that they represent potential new N800 users. Will that potential be fully realized? I'm not that naive. But, again, I was specifically addressing potential alone. Ironically, that also goes for your comment about Skype taking away the option to use: it CAN, but won't necessarily do it.

Nokia still intends to provide open SIP. That alone undermines Skype's potential to be the Wal-Mart of N800 voip. Potentially.

I prefer free, open software. But the fact is that if you ask 'internet phone' to random computer users everywhere then chance is that 'Skype' is their reply - or else they're not familiar with making calls over the internet at all. So, getting Skype on the N800 was good for that reason - large contacts list, and contacts in other companies on the other side of the world are also familiar with it. Besides, Skype _does_ have some other features that most alternatives don't: 1) More countries are included for landcalls. 2) Cheap calls (this is also the case for some of the alternatives, but 1) is more often than not enough that it doesn't help). And 3) Penetrates well in firewall environments.

I really would like to have an open source version instead of course. Skype had the most stupid 'missing close when disconnect' bug for half a year (in the linux version), which would have been easy to fix if it was open (instead we had to resort to pre-loading a patched C runtime lib. with hacked functionality). And now that it's been fixed, it's only in a new version with terrible user interface (the old one was good. This is the layout in the N800 version, btw.)

Guess we're missing each others point here ... (still it's great, I never thought I'd one day discuss VoIP with Mary Poppins )

From my point of view it doesn't matter where those 100 millions came from. The fact that there are 100 millions means that there's an emerging monopoly which I should do my best to fight. So there's 100 million reasons not to use Skype.

I really can't see why it should matter if the users were taken from other alternatives. See what happened with MS Windows? Most Windows users never had a different OS before, still each of them helps creating a hostile environment for the users of other platforms. What they call "choice" then is "well, you can still switch to Windows if you dont like the incompatibilities". Well...

I'm not saying Skype shouldn't be on the N800. I'm not saying people shouldn't use it. All I say is theres good reason not to use it (in fact, 100 million reasons) and one might want to think about it before installing it. What if everybody used it? Would you like that? I certainly wouldn't. I prefer competition. And competition can only live through open standards.

First time I heard this was befor I bought the 770 in March 2006. They said it would be provided for the 770. I'm not sure if anybody believes it anymore...

Ok you win.

Boring...