Note: I wrote this post at the beginning of the year. Since then Adium 1.0 has come out and my use of Skype and Gizmo has unfortunately ended. However, I’d still choose Gizmo over Skype if I startup doing VoIP again.

My love for Skype has been fading so I’ve been checking out Gizmo and I quite like it.

I’ve been mainly using Gizmo for incoming calls as my Skype number has stopped ringing for some odd reason. The call quality has been just as good and it’s a worthy alternative to Skype.

I thought that it hand an ugly interface for some reason, but it doesn’t. A bit cluttered maybe, but not bad overall. Still, I think that Skype’s is a bit more minimized in the latest versions and I do love that.

One of my favorite features in Gizmo is the little quality indicator that looks like the ones you see on a cell phone. Quite smart. Other fun additions are sound effects that you can use while talking on the phone. A horse, laugh, boo and others. Ok, so not really useful but still fun.

My biggest pet peeve is that you can’t close the Gizmo window without it disconnecting. Instead, you have to minimize it to the dock or leave it up all the time. It does have a smaller mode, but it still takes up to much screen room. I did come across an Adium plugin though which allowed Gizmo to run though Adium. This was extremely cool, but lacked headset support. Maybe they’ll get that working better once now that Adium 1.0 launches is out.

My biggest pet peeve for Skype is that they seem to be going away from the standard voice application and into video and Podcasts and other items. Sure they are great, but I don’t think they have the voice aspect down yet. That and their support is lacking both on the forum and via email.

Overall, Skype is good, but I think they are forgetting their core value and loosing when it comes to customer service and overall quality. This is where Gizmo seems to come in and pick up the pieces. If you are considering a free VoIP, checkout Gizmo.