I swung by the local RadioShack to pick up a Skype Starter Kit today. Om Malik posted about Skype's retail partnership with RadioShack last Sunday, but today was the first day I could get down there and drop a whopping $4.99 plus tax to get the kit. Of course I could have bought it online, but I wanted the full retail experience. Once I got home I took some photos and posted a Flickr photoset.
When I walked into the RadioShack a sales associate was on me in about 10 seconds. I hadn't been in a RadioShack in about four years, but I did remember that they have an agressive sales force (although Andy thinks they're 'passionate'). I asked her if they had the Skype Starter Kit. The inflection in her voice made it sound like I was the first to even ask about it (I probably was). She directed me to the location and upon seeing the 'kit' my first response was, "That's it?" It being a small mylar bag with a Skype logo on it. It looked like a do-it-yourself retail packaging kit.
Along side the Skype Starter Kit they also had the Linksys CIT200 cordless handset and the Motorola H500 bluetooth headset. I didn't feel like spending $100, so I opted for the Starter Kit.
The kit contains a very cheap headset with two standard plugs for the headphone/microphone jacks. The earpiece does have the Skype logo on it though. There is also a 3" CD that is for Windows 2000/XP only. The packaging does tell you that you can visit Skype.com to download the software for Mac/Linux. Finally the kit contains a small voucher card (about the size of a business card) that has a unique code on the back for 30 minutes of SkypeOut credit.
One of the concerns I had was that the voucher would only be good for new Skype accounts. Fortunately this wasn't the case and I was able to add a 30 minute credit to my existing SkypeOut account.
As a Mac user the headset is useless since the line-in port on a PowerBook is not powered, but I'll try it out on my wife's ThinkPad.
