Below is the reply I received from Skype about this conflict. I have followed their suggestion and, thus far, it is working.

"Our development team is aware of this issue and working hard on fixing it. Currently you may try following solution.
1. Open Skype main window.
2. Choose "Tools" > "Options" > "General settings"
3. Under "Visual style of the window" please choose "Classic Windows".

We truly apologise and hopefully problem is solved in our next hotfix. At the moment we are not able to provide you with the exact date."

Thanks for following up on this.

There is a new release of Skype (4.0.0.215) that appears to have fixed the problem.

I was out my sisters yesterday, loading in a new game for her, it kept dropping to task bar, would not run, that has happened to two of my other games she said, what has been installed recently, my nephew had installed Skype, I un-installed it, all her game now function correctly, so it's not JUST, screensavers it nackers. Jim

It's clear they stumbled into DirectX without realizing that they'd tie up the entire Direct3D graphics subsystem. :) But they're not the first. That was Microsoft with their NetMeeting software. That led to many a tech support phone call for SereneScreen I assure you.