Sykpe, video conferencing, or just plain old cheap phone solutions

[Sysman]

Here's the plot. There's a little old lady down the road who has a son and grandchildren in South Africa and another son in Spain and she wants to keep in regular touch with them without running up huge phone bills.

I know there are cheapish mobile deals out there for international calls, but most mobiles are small and perhaps too fiddly for someone of her age, so we were wondering about a laptop with Skype (or similar), which also brings up the idea of a webcam set up.

Does anyone have experience / suggestions / do's and don'ts here?

[Drewster]

Here's the plot. There's a little old lady down the road who has a son and grandchildren in South Africa and another son in Spain and she wants to keep in regular touch with them without running up huge phone bills.

I know there are cheapish mobile deals out there for international calls, but most mobiles are small and perhaps too fiddly for someone of her age, so we were wondering about a laptop with Skype (or similar), which also brings up the idea of a webcam set up.

Does anyone have experience / suggestions / do's and don'ts here?

Well Skype is pish easy and pretty reliable - and your little old lady would probably love it....
Trouble is cost.... for the PC/Laptop.... seems a little overkill for the old dear to buy a Laptop just for skype.... although she would no doubt get well into it and be Twittering and Tweeting like a goodun in no time. (Or more likely Emailing photos etc)

[d000hg]

You can get dirt-cheap calls from UK to most countries (even to mobiles) either by getting an add-on to your phone package, or using a separate service where you dial a prefix before the main number.

My TalkTalk package lets me pay a few quid a month and then I can call many countries free, or at least that's how it used to work... I used to have many conference calls to the USA at no cost.

This might help: Money Saving Expert

And this little tool might be helpful: call price checker

[Moscow Mule]

Grannies LOVE video calls. Fact.

However, she'll have to pay for monthly costs of broadband (unless she's got talk talk or something else free) and initial outlay of laptop / netbook / all in one pc as mentioned before. Is she a rich old lady?

[Not So Wise]

Here's the plot. There's a little old lady down the road who has a son and grandchildren in South Africa and another son in Spain and she wants to keep in regular touch with them without running up huge phone bills.

I know there are cheapish mobile deals out there for international calls, but most mobiles are small and perhaps too fiddly for someone of her age, so we were wondering about a laptop with Skype (or similar), which also brings up the idea of a webcam set up.

Does anyone have experience / suggestions / do's and don'ts here?

Mobile deals for international calls are generally pretty crap quality, dropped calls and "hello? hello can you hear me?" are pretty common.

Skype is probably best as long as user has access to a decent internet connection, you can go normal route of pc to pc but also nice thing is if user is not to pc savy you can get a Skype phone (one that plugs direct into router not pc) and after the initial account setup not require pc again, works just like normal house phone as far as they are concerned

Also by some clever usage of Skype plans you can reduce costs even more and not require Skype on both ends of the call.

EG: For the son in Spain she gets Unlimited Europe plan for £5.73pm, she can call his landline as much as she wants at no extra cost
For the one in SA she gets a local Skype online number (£10 per quarter) and he can call her as if he was making a local call

Many other little tricks as well, like get 3 mobile in the UK and then get all your Skype calls on your mobile or use skype forwarding and you don’t even need an internet connection (though don’t recommend forwarding to UK mobile as gets expensive)

[FiveTimes]

What about getting a 3Mobile phone - install the skype client and done ?