Do You Need A Gizmo To Talk On Your Mac?

Monday, May 19, 2008 | The Cheap Mac | Read or Post a Comment

Gizmo I love to talk on the phone. I love a bargain. I love free. How many ways can Mac users talk on their Macs these days? Plenty.

From iChat to Skype to Gizmo and others, the Mac is becoming a free for all talk fest.

What is surprising is how many of my Mac using friends don’t know their Macs can become a phone, of sorts. Most Mac users think iChat is only for text messaging, chatting between Mac users.

Often, Mac users think iChat is useful between Macs at home, and.... (excerpted).

3 Reader Comments

SoothSayer said:

When I switched to Mac about 5 years ago, mine was the first Mac in the extended family. Then with the release of iChat, got a Mac for my parents so that my kids could have regular video chats with their grandparents. Just the cost savings on phone calls alone paid for my Mac invenstment, not to mention the family bonding.
Today, with all of my extended family members we have about 8+ Macs and do conferencing as well.
When am on the road, it is a great way to keep in touch with the family.
While PC solutions have been available, nothing worked as slick as iChat, delivering excellent audio and video call qualities.

Adam Edwards said:

The UK mainly use MSN for IM’s and iChat doesn’t like it :( So unfortunately i don’t use iChat id love to but i wouldn’t have anyone to talk to because al my friends have MSN!!

kwshoes said:

My question of the day is, ’Do you use iChat?’ If so, how? If not, what else works for you besides iChat?

Yes, I use iChat. My Buddy List is always open and I try to remember to update my status message to reflect my true status. Before there was iChat, I used AIM in a similar fashion.

It seems to me that people—or at least a majority of my Buddies—aren’t using chat as much as they used to, not going on line as often. Maybe they’ve moved on to that “new place uptown”, Club Facebook, or to Café MySpace.

I use iChat now mainly as a way to check in with my daughters and grandkids, and mainly in text chat mode so I can leave iTunes (or Pandora) playing the background music that accompanies my daily routine(s).

I use Skype now mainly for long voice calls to cousins in Ireland once a month or so, at 2.1 cents a minute, with SkypeOut, a huge bargain compared to land lines and cell calls. I also have Gizmo installed and keep it updated, but there’s no compelling reason to use it instead of Skype.

I’ve tried to get some of my business associates to make greater use of iChat (or AIM, if they aren’t Mac users), but haven’t had much success in convincing them to do it.

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