Hello folks,
Can anyone give me some information about Skype please?

Next month my daughter is leaving on a gap year trip. She is starting in Australia and intends to move around doing conservation work. Anyway she expects to be pretty inaccessible some of the time.

She is not sure yet whether she will take her laptop so I`m trying to find the best way to keep in touch with her.
If she does take it we are considering one of these which she could buy in Australia and use there

http://www.three.co.uk/personal/hand..._/overview.omp

Skype would work free computer to computer, and by phone at a lesser charge than normal (I think)

My main questions are
What is the phone quality like from one end of the world to the other?

For the computer option, would we just need USB headsets with mics?

Anything I should know that they don`t tell you?

Is there anything better than Skype to suit our needs?

I`m open to suggestions

Thanks

Elaine