State of the Art - Upgrading the Quality of Video Chatting - NYTimes.com

On Tuesday, after a year of public testing, the Skype team (now owned by eBay) released Skype 4.0 for Windows, which the company calls “the biggest new release in Skype’s history.”

The first change strikes you immediately — and during the months of public testing, caused howls of protest among the faithful: Skype is no longer a flotilla of little windows dancing around your screen. It’s now a single consolidated window. You can still carry on multiple chats or audio calls simultaneously, but you switch among them by clicking their names in a list at the left side, rather than juggling multiple windows. (A variation of the old arrangement is still available.)

All kinds of useful features are on display. You can drag various sections of the software to resize them; discreet notifications pop up from your system tray when people are trying to reach you; you can import the address book from Hotmail, Yahoo or Outlook.

State of the Art - Upgrading the Quality of Video Chatting - NYTimes.com