Re:Why just one reason to prefer Skype? (Score 1)

You can just use netstat and tcpdump to see who you're exchanging data with. A Skype2Skype call (without firewalls in between) exchanges voice data with the callee and nobody else. Skype.com can't listen in on this. I don't know if there are loopholes or simple errors in their crypto implementation, but I am pretty sure it's good enough to protect me from my neighbour's sniffing. Call it obfuscation rather than encryption if you're more comfortable with that, but it's a lot better than plaintext data exchange as done by any sip softphone I've seen.

As to "pretty colours", availability and wm integration: I do believe those are important factors. I know *no* useable softphone for Linux or BSD. (I'd be grateful for any hints.) X-Lite is not available (it is for OS X, but it's not "integrated", it's a PITA); kphone crashes more often than not; linphone is nice but very primitive; LIPZ4 is very strictly closed source (and I could not get it to work with my VoIP provider); the rest are small fish that lack a lot of important features. Regarding call quality and stability, the best I could do was using asterisk directly in an xterm, with the OSS module as the local extension. Which is not exactly something I'd recommend to my aunt.

As to call quality, go ahead and give Skype a try. I certainly know what I'm sticking to for my private calls. ;-)