However, using Skype as our home phone is cheap, much cheaper than paying a local and long distance company for the priveledge of a dial tone and minutes on top of that, and they aren’t monopoly-utilizing bastards like most phone companies. Mostly the software does its job (though it occasionally chokes if Illustrator, Photoshop, and a billion webpages are all blazing away at once). Only drawbacks: sometimes it’s hard to coordinate one person reading webpages while the other is on a call, no 911, no state-specific 800 numbers. Suffice to say, I’m pro-Skype after this 6-month tryout.