My family live in the UK and we have relatives posted in Turkey, the Phillipines, and USA. We all currently use Skype and everyone LOVES it - especially the conference calling. Some of us have purchased SkypeIn numbers to allow relatives to make local calls [free of charge in the US for example] that come through to us on Skype. We have a DECT phone plugged into a USB adaptor on the PC and we take our Skype calls anywhere in the house. Having just discovered this newgroup today, I find people being critical of Skype and stressing SIP as an alternative however I really don't get the difference in terms of the end user experience. Maybe I am being a little slow on the uptake but can someone please explain what I am missing? What benefits would I gain from running asterisk here at home? If it helps, I am fairly tech literate - running a couple of linux web/mail servers on the net, a linux-based home server runs our mail/family calendar/PDA syncing as well as acting as a file store for backups and so on. Thanks in advance L