VOIP calls galore

So I am on the VOIP bandwagon... with the move to Geneva and wife away to meet her folks (i.e. her mayaka), I have been looking at (cheap) ways to keep in touch... ok I admit it ... make free calls on the net. So the next thing to do is lookup new & emerging technologies and VOIP sounded like a good start.

Did I say free... well almost free. Well here is a low down...

History
I wont bore you with the reams of literature on the net on this ...
http://www.voipproducts.eu/ tells you of the history of how VOIP started, what is it about etc

The Daddy of VOIP - Betamax
http://www.voipproducts.eu/betamax tells you of the various avtars of the company called betamax which was & still is the biggest name in VOIP. I use 2 of their products - voipcheap & freecall - they are all equally good (same software / network) but have different sets of countries which are free to call. See www.voipcheap.com or www.freecall.com to see what i mean.
For eg the one i use (the above 2) have UK, US, Switzerland & Singapore free. For others like India you pay a certain charge.
For an addtional 5cents per call, they will connect any 2 numbers in the list of countries (including free ones) together. This is the option i use, i connect my swiss home landline number with UK / US / Sing no. (like i did today).
If you have relations say in India, they can use this to call you in UK/US landline.

Note: Betamax have introduced some restrictions of late which the site will tell you about (max 5 hrs in 7 days, 10Euros gets you 120 days of free calls after which you pay 1 cent a min unless you pay 10 euros which gives you another 120 days of free calls)

How does this compare with say Skype
http://www.voipproducts.eu/compare-voip/ gives 2 sets of comparasions - between the different betamay products and the other one is yahoo v/s skype v/s msn etc...

My reco:
For a pure pc to pc voice chat, google talk is by far THE best.
For pc to phone, either skype (expensive) or one of the betamax ones (I use voip cheap)
For video chat, i find yahoo etc ok equally good (or bad)

Have fun figuring it out, if you want a crash course, just ask.

PS: A big Thanks to my friend Kamil who got me started on this and still keeps me updated on the latest & best offers around.

PPS: If you are calling from UK, just dial (0870 794 4301) works just as well ... use a phone and pay the same as a national call to call most of the western world, Autralia & SE Asia. If you are on O2, its part of your free minutes.