I am not able to connect as of 12:50 EST NYC.
I was online last night after being off for most of yesterday.
So what this means is I cannot rely on Skype at all.

i connect for seconds and then disconnect. While I am connected I don't see anybody connected, but I can make skypeout calls.
-guillermo
PS.- Is there a skype plugin that will let me upload my skype chats into gmail...so I can then search all my communication online (just like google talk chats get recorded there)

Came to my mother's house to teach her how to use skype..... oh well... she's not believing in tech anymore....

Greetings:
I can logon to Skype as of 13:30 Montreal time.
Are there any other Canadians who can't logon?
Regards Robert

Skype quality was so crappy lately that I was seriously thinking about other alternatives, or going back to any messenger with audio.

Skype had chopped audio, skipped portions of the conversation and then played back in a high speed fashion that sounded like talking under water, the "helicopter effect" audio, sometimes did not connect at all, too many to mention.

Besides, they DONT have any kind of customer support, no humans in their operation to take care of PAYING customers, as I am one of them, really disappointed of their crappy service, as a way to MAXIMIZE PROFITS no matter what !

Technical support, the only alternative: wade through tons of FAQ's to see if you could find an answer to your problem or post a desperate question in one of their blog places.

Total lack of respect for their customers, forcing them to "update" to new bloated and twisted versions of skype software, were their programmers cram a bunch of useless bells and wistles in their NEW software - like crappy video - only to gobble processor resources and memory, sometimes will take up to 100% of you CPU resources for long periods of time, slowing everything else to an painful crawl, or even crashing your system.

I totally hated their new and creative ways to squeeze money from their paying customers (ie.skypeout) like continuously increasing rates; and the attitude: dont like it: scram!, we have 8 million customers that don't complain, the new "connection fees" that were not existing when I signed-up.

I had paid for a year of service of their unlimited calls to any landline in USA and ocasionally used it to call home during a trip overseas; well one day, I could not connect, then I was forced to "update" to a new version to be able to connect... guess what; the "updated" version detected that I was calling from an ISP outside the USA, denied the service and forced me to pay for the call using the skypeout service, nice greedy going.

I am really glad it finally colapsed, a wake up call for them and for the world.

I'm really disappointed of this guys greediness, incompetence and stupidity.

I only hope they get OUT OF BUSINESS... SOON, is the best I can wish them.

I'll love to see another company raise to provide US a good service.

Been offline now for two working days. Not having a landline phone and previously relying upon Skype Out I cannot now rely upon Skype. Looking at using GizmoProject instead. The outage is just toooo long.

For me I got used to Skype, but its like anything else..you can get used to having it around at your disposal 24/7..or you can also get used to NOT having it around. Lately Skype SUCKS!!!! When I make a call I stay connected for a few minutes then my call conveniently DROPS and I have to 'call back' ..could it be because they have a CONNECTION fee? Anyway lately Skype is annoying and now with the past 2 days NO Skype..I have looked into something called Gismo Project and have downloaded it and will also use that as my tele service..I would say after this outage skype will lose a LOT of good customers.

There was an outage?

Well, I wouldn't wish skype out of business. For me skype is realy really important as I don't have a landline, and my boyfriend is in Angola for 1 year (and I'm in England, so that's quite a distance). I have family in Germany and Portugal and friends from Japan to Brazil. I REALLY need skype. And I think it's still cheaper than anything else, and that's calling Angolan mobile phones, too. Given all this, you can imagine that the last two days were not much fun. It seems to be coming back now, aaaah. Phew.

well on the matter of uptime, we should really not complain. quite amazing also how the system revived step by step what we should talk about is about the real cause of the crash. furthermore, this is a system with centralized login and that is it's current weakness. that is where something hit the skype p2p cloud wether from within or from the outside like a lightning strike and went dead instantly. what caused that ? how could this happen and what what has been done to prevent it. the discovery process will bring some of the truth to the surface. i predict that other exploits will manifest themselves.

I started using another software called - DAMAKA. My wife is traveling and we were using Skype to communicate. But since Skype was down and out, she did some research and found this company in US. (damaka.com). She sent out an email informing me about this software.

Along Audio/ video calls, chat, voicemail, I also have video conferencing, which is kool... we have been using the videomail feature a lot.... very useful under the circumstances!!!

I like the fact that I can connect to Hotmail and Yahoo messenger from damaka. Two less apps to open! :-)

Here is the website:
http://www.damaka.com

--Ivinsky

You love them, or you hate them: that's what shows in comments so far about Skype and their management.

Let's give them some credit: they have saved us all a lot of bucks since we have been using the service -- and if rates go up from time to time, that's life. Do you think other providers will not jack up rates as they become more established? In your dreams!

The major fault at Skype during this outage (failure to connect) episode has been the lack of crisis management. For a communications business, they should have been out there much quicker telling people there was a problem. I am hearing endless tales of people who tried to toy around with their computers, thinking it was a fault at their end.

How this will affect Skype in the long run remains to be seen. Watch the E-bay stock on Nasdaq for possible clues.

Like many others, I have loaded alternative VOIP access as a back-up, but I will be staying with Skype.

In fact, you can sum up the whole sorry incident in three short words: life goes on.

Mebbe those SOB's will be a little less arrogant, patronizing and holier-than-thou.

The quality of service has gone down hill in the last couple of years. Used to be a great service now I can barely connect. I try to call over seas and it just rings and rings. I call with my landline to ask if they are hearing their phone ring...nope. Where then is it ringing and why am I getting billed for calls to no where?

It was a real problem :
I use skype to watch over my elderly aunt living at hundreds of kilometers from me.

1 day before it would have been a catastrophy : on the 15 of August, thanks to skype I could detect that my elderly aunt had fallen at 2.00 in the morning.
I took me 1h to reach some one to go and help her (at that time), but in the end we managed.

1 day after with the outage, I would not have seen it and my aunt would have had to go for several days at the hospital to recover.