[jdonahue]

Agreed. And this might be just me, but I greatly prefer talking on a computer (laptop or desktop) to holding a phone in my hand up to my ear. Especially for long personal calls or calls to businesses where I know I'll probably be on hold forever (e.g. Comcast) - it is INSANELY handy for that. Speaker phone would probably accomplish something similar but the audio quality in and out is lower on my phone than on my laptop, and it also (like you said) uses minutes. The calls are also more reliable in my experience - I've never had a call dropped or had the audio cut out over Gmail on a good WiFi connection.