Long gone are the days when you’d have to save up for weeks to make a long distance or international phone call. Thanks to Voice over IP technology and the widespread availability of broadband it’s now possible to talk free of charge to anyone in the world.

Skype has made the technology accessible to all through it’s simple and fun-to-use chat-style interface. The program is gaining in popularity, meaning the community of users you can chat to for free is expanding. This update certainly contains some decent additions to the previous version, most notably its webcam facilities. This means you can now watch your buddies as you chat to them and let them see you if you want.

You can use the program to chat with other Skype users anywhere in the world for free either via telephone or the built-in chat feature. However, some overly optimistic users may be disappointed to learn that you still need to pay for credits to make calls to landlines and mobiles with Skype, through the SkypeOut function. Luckily, this is a very painless process, and Skype has recently added a plethora of different ways to pay.

The program is perhaps even easier to use than ever, with streamlined new tools such as the ability to add a contact from the main Skype window and contact grouping for arranging your friends, family and colleagues into categories. You can even import contacts from Outlook, and find out if any of these use Skype. The changes to the interface and its icons may confuse existing users for a while, but once you get used to it, the new GUI is arguably more intuitive than ever.

As we’ve come to expect there’s plenty you can do other than just having a two-way conversation with a friend, including inviting other users into a conference, setting up chatrooms, exchanging files, and viewing the history of your contacts. You can even set up customized voicemail to record messages while you’re away from base.

We're also excited by the new public chats function. You'll get to join in many different groups and talk about a specific subject. You can even create your own chat for others to join in, like an Italian language class or a talk on the consequences of the Iraq war.

As more people clamber aboard the Skype bandwagon, the network will become a much more convenient way for people to chat with each other. The client now provides the perfect platform on which to join the communication revolution. Let the Skyping commence…