Cannot connect to skype

[Me - Atlantic]

> Did you try installing new skype beta for linux available at skype.com?
No, I didn't.  Do you think that the Beta software is going to solve
this problem? (I would think that the stable version would work over a
beta release).

If you know from experience or otherwise that the stable version has
problems that the beta version resolves, I'd be willing to try it out.
But at this point, since the stable version works on my laptop, I'd like
to try and resolve this problem so that I have the same basic releases
on both systems.