skype-just for messages and chat. you can call other persons but connection is very bad. its just for calling your next door neighbour on lunch, or asking a friend for a homework from math.

msn- it has a louds of options. you cane phone, chat, even have a video conversation. chat is very good. when you phone you hear a slow motion words.
video conversation-> that is good if you want to talk using your hands and legs but if you are trying to speak you will be disapointed. it is soo slow. you can go on bathroom and back and you will see that lips are moving but the voice is late. of course, i am talking about countrie2countrie phoning, soo i dont know is this true.

what do you think?

I newer got Video or Voice conversation going with MSN, it just doesn't work for me! With skype, I have a little bit of delay but atleast I can use it. No matter how good the code in MSN is, if you(I) can't use it, it's no good.

Google Talk is a new alternative! You sign in with your GMAIL Account (Like the way you sign in MSN with your MSN(Hotmail) account). I quality is good and you can connect to the network with ANY Jabber combatible Client(Without Voice). Also, I haven't (Yet) notice any ..long.. delay with GTALK

Skype is not just for messages and chat. In fact Skype is made for voice calls over the internet using Kazaa p2p protocol method. And also, Skype is by far the best provider for free voice calls over the internet. If you are just calling your neighbour next door and the responds of the signals are bad, it's most probably be your internet connection. Also note that Skype uses your internet bandwidth to transmit voice signals, your usage of the internet bandwidth especially downloading or uploading files while using Skype will definately affect the voice quality.

MSN is rather, I would say, quite bad in terms of transmission other than text. Text-messaging would probably be better for MSN. If you try to send a 1MB file to the same person using MSN, and then using another data transmission program, etc IRC DCC, MSN would most probably end up last or connection terminated without even tranmiting the entire 1MB file. Voice wise, it's still alright but not for quality-hungry people. I would rather say MSN voice is often laggy and the connection is bad.

TO summarise, Skype wins in terms of communication, be it data transfers or voice calls.

Connection is bad? Skype's connection is the best I've ever seen. Firewall, router, switch it can bypass pretty much everything. And the voice quality is by far superior to any other means, its much better than a standard telephone for sure. Ebay recently acquired the company actually, they have no competition when it comes to VoIP.

MSN's voice chat is the worst I can say, even Google Talk which is in beta does a better job at connecting and voice quality. MSN is just there for text messaging. I have truthfully never used any other features except that and webcam, hopefully the webcam feature of Skype will be complete soon so that I won't have to use MSN for that either.

Hey, just to add on, Skype actually has an addon for voice conferencing..
Check it out here... http://www.video4skype.com/

So we can now discard MSN for the voice, webcam and data transmission. Use it solely for text messaging.

MSN is very good for chat , but bad for conversation

Skype is very good for corversation


Im is superior Sype

I live in Mexico and my girlfriend went to England, and i found the cheapest way of calling her was skype (she did not have a pc there, so the phone call was from my pc to a public phone somewhere in london).

And as of chat, i dont have many friends plugged around skype and the ones i have in skype have messenger, so we usually chat trough ms software.

By the way, MSN means Microsoft Network, its usually mistaken with MSN Messenger, hehe sorry about my pedantism.

Skype and MSN specialization are somewhat different so it is hard to compare and contrast. In internet phone skype is the pioneer and they have the edge over msn as well as any other internet phones. Yahoo is also coming up with the same idea which Skype pioneered first.

For online chat I preferred msn while for internet phone like PC to PC call which is free I really like Skype. Its so clear. I've been making calls from Asia to Canada, Japan and United States using skype PC to PC calls.

I think Skype is a much better program for voice communication then MSN, altrough I just ask my friends to get on TeamSpeak