Hi bill, this is Howard.  nice to hear you again.
Their are some intolerant people here who don't respect other people's 
choice of using echolink.
Ignore bigots of thought where ever you find them.
Echo link works fine.  for communication with radio amateurs.
It's available from
http://www.echolink.org
When you set it up, you have to set all of the station views to explorer 
view.
This is done by unchecking index view for everything under tools 
preferences.
The audio doesn't compare with skype.  Their used to be and maybe still is a 
noon handyhams net that meets on one of the repeaters from Minneapolis, as 
well as on echolink.
It's kind of cool to talk to mobiles driving around Jerusalem.  Now try that 
on HF!
Have fun and a number of people on here have echolink nodes.