Call transfers enabled in Skype 4.2 beta
Skype has added a new feature that is going to let it play nice not only with your Skype contacts, but also your landlines and cell phones.
Popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) client Skype has released a beta of version 4.2 of its software. While incremental upgrades aren’t usually all that exciting, this one is definitely worth your while. Give a go.
Skype Access is a new feature that will let you pay by the minute at over 100,000 Wi-Fi hot spots around the world. Most pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi hot spots charge you by the hour, but the new Skype Access feature will let you pay $0.19 a minute from your Skype credit, so if you only use 20 minutes, you pay for 20 minutes. If the service is available at a hot spot, a message will pop up telling you that you can use it, if no message appears you simply try another one.
Possibly the most exciting new feature is call transfer. This new feature is perfect for businesses as it will allow you to transfer an incoming call to any other Skype contact for free. Where it gets really interesting is that you can also transfer to landlines and cell phones at Skype Out rates, so depending on where you are located, this could could be covered by your unlimited monthly plan with the service. Combined with the Skype In service which gives you a real world phone number, a small business could now have most of the features of a traditional PDX (Phone Data eXchange) system.
The 4.2 beta also features better integration with Windows 7 as well as a plugin capability for Google Chrome now that the browser supports extensions.
Skype has taken a bit of a quiet road on new features as of late, and perhaps this is a sign of things to come as the company is now back in the hands of its original founders, but only time will tell for sure.
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