I recently posted about how great a service Skype is, and if you’re not using it, you should load it and adopt it.

My reliance on it was emphasized this last week when Skype had a rare sustained failure. It failed to recongize that you were connected - so it didn’t allow you to accept calls, or maintain even message chat sessions.

The impact:

• Firstly - I rebooted my laptop - not once - but twice - as I suspected my aging overloaded Dell - rather than Skype. This takes an age, and obviously yielded no improvement to the situation - except to make me even more frustrated.
• I had my JV partners calling on a regular basis, only to have failed connections after a few seconds - so the whole thing ended up a waste of productive time. Our scheduled 3-way conference had to be postponed for a couple of days - which in turn impacts our project.
• I couldn’t support a couple of customers who needed one-on-one interaction.

If you’re faced with something similar, check out Skype’s status at : Skype Heartbeat. It’ll save you some blood pressure problems and/or save your computer’s keyboard from being pounded in frustration …