There's a new version of Skype out for Windows — the biggest update to the voice-over-IP software in quite a while.

Skype 4.0 completely overhauls the user interface; everything's in a different place now, and this can be confusing at first. Most of the changes were made to streamline the chat and video conferencing functions, so folks who've used Skype mostly just for phone calls will likely wonder what the point of it all is.

Even if you're one of them, though, there are some improvements, most notably in call quality. Skype 4.0 handles audio in a completely different way, and the call quality should be significantly better than it was in the previous release version, 3.8. We did a quick trial call and were impressed. The new audio codec is also intended to make the software usable on slow dial-up modem connections in developing nations.

We haven't tested it, but word is that video is even more improved. Images ought to break up less now, and like voice calls, it should work a bit better on connections with less bandwidth thanks to better compression, although we wouldn't count on good dial-up performance.

People brave enough to have installed beta test copies of Windows 7 are already familiar with Skype 4.0; previous versions of Skype didn't work in Windows 7, so they've had to use the beta version of Skype 4.0. This stable release doesn't have much that'll rock your world if you've already been using the test version, but if you're new to Skype 4.0 you're sure to find a plethora of new things to check out.

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