As you know, I've been traveling overseas lately, first to Greece, then to India and now I'm in Thailand. When I'm on the road in the U.S., cell phones have made it easy to stay in touch with my office, friends and family. Leaving the country, though, had made that a lot more challenging.

In the past I've used international calling cards, which can be pretty reasonable as far as cost. This trip I was able to turn on the international option with my Sprint phone, but it's quite expensive ($1.99 to $2.49 per minute). That made me wonder if I might be better off using VOIP (voice over internet protocol), which I've read has improved a lot in the last year.

Checking the reviews at PCmag.com, it seemed that Skype was one of the better choices (and was a free application), so I downloaded the software. Easy to set-up, I could now speak to anyone else with Skype on their computer. What I wanted to do, though, was call real phones, not computers. And that's possible through something called "Skype Out." It costs money, but not much. I put $10 in my Skype account and hit the road.

In the last two weeks of traveling I've regularly called back to the U.S. and spent several hours on the phone. Well, sort of. Really, I've just been plugged into my computer with a headset. And the cost? A whopping $.02 (that's two-cents) per minute. So to this point I've spent a total of about $4 on calls to the U.S. I've also needed to make some calls to local numbers in the countries I've been in, and I can do that as well, for the same cost, rather than paying the hotel's fees.

So I'm sold on this VOIP stuff. In the U.S. I'll continue to use my cell phone, but out of the country, Skype will be on whatever computer I've got with me.