Lingo... You're fired!

After being in japan and comparing Skype to Lingo, there is no contest. The quality is very good with Skype, plus there are no drops, like I experience with Lingo. To be on the fair side, I am not sure if some of the problems are caused by Lingo directly or my D-Link router. However, considering Skype also has to go through the same router, Skype performs much better. Now the only question is when dialing a phone number with Skype (as opposed to PC to Pc communication), is there any degradation in quality. We'll find out soon.

Another major annoyance with Lingo is the time delay with Lingo. There is about a second delay. However, since communication is a two-way street, the one-second delay actually means a two-second delay. There is a one second delay on what you say to the other party, which means there is a one-second delay for the party to hear what you said, and then they reply, which means there is a one-second delay in what you hear as a reply. So at the end of what you say, you wait two seconds before hearing the reply. This causes major problems when there is "interactive" communication. That is, someone interrupts you, but it is two-seconds later from the point where you should have been interrupted.

By the way, this delay is most notable with calls to Japan. With calls to Europe, the delays are not as significant, but that doesn't help with the calls to Japan.

Of course the dropped lines is pretty bad, and the worst part about it is that you are not aware you were dropped, so you can keep on talking and talking and not realize the other party is no longer there. I am even calling into conference calls with two lines just so that in case I am dropped by my Lingo line, I can quickly join with the other connected line.