skype is shutting down

Skype is set to shut down this year, and this made me think of all the internet specific communications stuff I've used over the decades. Yes, it's decades at this point.

In some respects, I miss how internet communications used to be, but it's not like I'd go back to the old ways.

When is Skype shutting down? May 5, 2025. Why? Because Teams exists and Microsoft wants you to use that instead. Fair enough.

It's been years since I used Skype, but when I did, I actually did have a paid subscription because at the time it was one of the cheapest ways to have a reliable phone line through internet. And oh yeah, I used it regularly.

The exact reason I stopped using Skype is because my VoIP box broke. I had this VoIP box (which I think I bought direct from Skype themselves?) that I connected a plain Panasonic cordless phone to, and I loved that thing. Great handset, great battery life, comfortable, awesome ringer, awesome speakerphone. One day I went to unplug the VoIP box out of a power strip to move it elsewhere, and the damned thing cracked apart. Really cheap plastic. The VoIP box, not the Panasonic. There wasn't any other cheap "Skype compatible" thing I could find for sale to plug my cordless phone base into, and the one I bought was out of production, so I switched over to wired headset on my PC. I hated this because that Panasonic phone was so much nicer. I dealt with that for a little while until I didn't need the Skype line anymore, canceled the service and haven't used it since. I was really sick of that stupid headset by that point.

Do I want to go back to communications like that? Nope, although I could if I wanted to, albeit in a different way. Bluetooth phones exist that are very much like the old cordless phones. You pair one to your smartphone and then you can place/receive calls with it. Some have the ability to add additional phones so you can have handsets throughout the house (as in one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the garage, and so on).

Skype was actually the first thing I ever used where I heard high-quality audio when speaking to somebody else for Skype-to-Skype "calls". That was weird, because I was very used to standard phone audio, which was 8000Hz to 12000Hz. To hear that bumped up over 22000Hz was different. Even now, every time I hear that high-quality audio on some smartphone calls, I still find it weird.

Then there was the whole instant messenger thing that Skype had. I never cared that much for it. It worked, and that's pretty much all I can say about it.

And on the subject of instant messaging, nina.chat exists that has literally brought back the old AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo! Instant Messenger, obviously run on different servers now. While that is a giant dose of nostalgia, it's one of those things where yeah, okay, use the old software, get sick of it quick and then never use it again.

If there were a retro community built around using those old IM programs, okay, maybe that would be something worth investing time into. But that really doesn't exist from what I've seen.

Questions also come into my head. Why bother with an IM client for chat? Why not just use IRC, which can be used in an instant messenger style? For retro computing in general, wouldn't you want as many computers as possible to be able to use it, regardless of age or OS? Even text-only terminals can use IRC with software like Irssi.

I just don't like the idea of messaging being "tied" to a specific client. And that brings me back to Skype. From what I remember, it's like I said, I did not care much for the way Skype did messaging. Yes, it worked, but I remember the client really have a problem keeping settings where I had to reset things over and over. That got annoying real quick. And it was also annoying that to send/receive messages, "must have Skype client". AIM, YIM, ICQ and heck, even MSN wasn't like that. You could use alternate clients with those, BUT NOT FOR SKYPE. Stupid.

Skype was a thing, and soon to be not a thing.

And as far as retro instant messaging goes, IRC is absolutely the best choice just solely for the fact it works on any computer, even if what you use has no GUI at all.

Published 2025 Mar 4