In an effort to stay in touch with my son more I decided to try video chatting on the PC. We’ve been trying to set the web cams up all day today without much success. Yahoo Messenger was choppy as hell. AIM connected OK but kept disconnecting us after a few seconds. With Gmail’s program the audio was great but the video didn’t work at all and we couldn’t even get Windows Live Messenger to work at all, let alone get far enough to try a video connection.
Does anyone use anything other than the above programs? I’m looking for something free as I know his mom wont pay for any software. I would be willing to pay for it if it was very inexpensive, seeing as I have to buy two copies. Anyone have anything?
Did you try Skype? That is what I use to chat with my pals in California, for free, and it works great.
Only thing is that they have a list of “approved” Web cams. I am not sure how important that list is to making sure the app works. My Web cam happens to be one of the approved ones.
A couple of months ago, David Pogue of the New York Times favorably reviewed the newest version of the Skype software (Skype 4.0 for Windows). According to him, if you’ve got a fast connection and one of the approved webcams, you can get 640x480 video at 30 frames per second with little if any delay.
Thirded on Skype. I routinely call Japan to the US and have very infrequent problems with call or video quality. Plus they have rates for calling landlines and cells that rival the best calling cards you can find on the web, unless you’re calling an “obscure” country. Then you can usually find a better rate through an online calling card (and dial their 1-800 number through Skype! ).
It’s funny, after I posted the OP I went out to pick up dinner and came back home to do some more research. I decided to download Skype. It installed easier than the other programs and the equipment set-up was painless. I have yet to actually try it on a call but I’ve read good things about it and this thread is recommending nothing but Skype so hopefully this will be the one. Thanks guys.
).