I am a big user of Skype especially over on WinExtra for our daily video news show and while I have tried the beta of Skype 5.0 I ended up having to roll back to the previous version 4 so I was kind of glad to see this announcement show up on the Skype blog, even though the news isn’t all roses.
With the release of version 5 Skype has moved the new group video chat, and live support, to a subscription model. From their announce on the Skype blog:
Group video calling has shed its ‘beta’ label and officially joined our product line-up with the introduction of the new version of Skype for Windows .
It’s available as part of the new Premium package which offers group video calling together with access to live chat customer support.
You can buy a day pass for $4.99/€3.49/£2.99* or a monthly subscription for just $8.99/€5.99/£4.99† per month.
If you sign up for group video calling in the first month, you’ll receive a 33% discount on 3 and 12 month subscriptions. In addition, you’ll get a 25% discount off an HD webcam.
The new version of Skype for Windows also includes a number of improvements to video stability and quality, and we recommend that you download it now .
Here’s hoping that whatever problem with the software that cause the service to go down for an extended period of time has been fixed.
