Skype 

Communicate with your friends via text or voice calls. Simply call landline numbers and mobile phones directly from your PC.

Skype is my first choice for video chatting. High audio-quality is the main feature that distinguishes it from other Internet telephony applications. It also uses very little Internet data.

Skype works on PC, tablets, and smartphones that have Internet access. Calling from one Skype account to another is free. But to call from Skype to a phone number, you have to spend prepaid charges.

Skype was originally created by independent developers, and was later acquired by Microsoft. Since then, a lot of improvements were done to the program, including a revamp of its interface. The present version comes with large-size emoticons. Facebook integration allows you to chat with your friends, and call them easily using their phone numbers or email-IDs in profiles. After each call, it asks you to rate the audio-quality in one to five stars. This feedback is used to constantly improve the service.

Although Skype has all these nice features, it has certain annoying bugs. It synchronizes chat-messages among a PC and a mobile phone marking them as ‘not-read’. Hence, I get confused where I actually left the conversation, when I switch between them. Still, Skype is a great tool for low-cost communication.