Skype

Frank Fusco

Member
Messages
12,782
Location
Mountain Home, Arkansas
In preparation for my son and his family moving to Australia for a year, I recently installed Skype on my computer.
Yesterday a Logitech webcam I bought from Amazon arrived. Software installed and loaded smoothly.
Everything worked fine. Only problem, I couldn't find the headset in the box and figured I had a problem. :eek: No. The mic is built into the webcam and the sound comes out of the computer speakers.
Called my son, had a nice conversation, could see DIL and grands in background.
This is truly a nice video cam and works very well. Calls are free. :thumb: That's very good and will be nice for keeping in touch when all are as far away as Australia.
 
We do the same with our family in Montana. Can chat with our nephews and see how much they are growing.

I've found with Skype I have to turn off the auto updates on it once it is working well. It seems like every couple of patch versions they put out breaks Skype for me, so when I find a working version, I stick with it.
 
I've been using Skype for a lot of years now, and yes it is a wonderful program to be sure. We call our daughter in Canada twice a week, just to keep in contact, and so she can whinge to us in Japanese :D

We sure found a BIG improvement with the Mac, the built in cameras are way ahead of the OLD Logitech cameras we had.

The built in mic worked OK, but I found with a room with lots of ambient noise, like the L shop, fridges running etc, a stand alone mic was a lot better.

We also have bought Skype minutes, and boy have they come in handy, if I really need to call someone over seas, and they are not online, I can call them on their land line, or cell phone, and it cost only a few pennies a minute, and because I bought the Skype minutes, I can call 1-800 numbers for free in the US, this is great when I want to talk to customer service at some company.

All in all, a great product, and a fantastic price to be sure! :thumb:
 
Actually, we used a webcam more than ten years ago. Our son and our DIL lived in Alaska when the twins were born. I were able to communicate and I could see my first grandchildren. Video and sound quality was lousy but better than not at all. The signal took 12 seconds each way and that made things difficult but we learned to pause and wait. I had dial-up internet service then. Skype is a huge improvement. My cell phone is not Skype capable and I'm not yet interested in entering the world of Blackberry's, Droids, etc. yet.
 
I had Skype on this machine, Acer, didn't like it. It would lock up the whole thing. Wife has it on her Dell and works fine. All in all a wonderful tool for those with separated loved ones.
 
I had Skype on this machine, Acer, didn't like it. It would lock up the whole thing. Wife has it on her Dell and works fine. All in all a wonderful tool for those with separated loved ones.

You might try an older version, sticking with major point releases (4.0, 4.1, 4.2, etc...) to see if one of the older versions work. Be sure to turn off the auto update option within Skype's settings.

try http://www.oldapps.com

It could also be a hardware driver conflict. I've ran into this and simply checked the manufacturer's site for hardware updates and installed the latest ones.
 
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I have been using Skype for over 2 years now and I use it for all my long distance calls it only costs me $30 a year for 6 hr a day and I use it to talk to my friend in the UK Skype to Skype and it works very well I do have some dropouts but for what ya pay for it, its Great.:thumb::thumb:

Hey Frank but me on you list.:wave:
 
I have used skype for many many years. I even got a Linksys skype phone. Makes the whole thing cordless and the phone syncs with your contacts on the computer wirelessly.

Also use skype out minutes which i buy automatically in small amounts. That way if you are talking like i do on the phone internationally and the credit you have expires it automatically updates and does not interupt the call.

I have also had my fair share of issues with different versions over time. Must say the windows 7 and skypes latest version seem to work very well along with the legacy linksys phone

One thing the system relies on when you start to use the webcam is bandwidth. You might have noticed from the recent speed tests some of us got into when Stu posted his speed recently, that this is not always constant whereever you go. The international links are often much slower than what you get as a local subscriber because of bandwidth cost. So it depends on how liberated competitive the market is that you dealing with as to how fast you get to access that territory. In SA as an example whilst there is loads of competition, the cost per unit for air time on any international leg has not exactly come down and hence the bandwidth local service providers put out for local customers using international bandwidth is still throttled back. So skype to skype calls suffer and i end up using skype credit calls to get through.

Still dramatically cheaper than Bell Canadas international call rate. Even to the UK and Europe.
 
Only for the long distance to any phone in the US and Canada
It sure beats AT&T charging me $5.00/mo for the privilege of charging me .10/min Told them I wanted the highest rate they had and drop any other charges they had a hard time getting the head around that one.

Jay

OK, we are good there. Recenlty dropped our regular telephone carrier and put signed on with our cable/internet provider for their telephone service. $20.00 a month unlimited long distance calling in U.S. Our overseas Skype is planned to be used exclusively to the kids Skype in the land of Oz.
 
My son is in Texas, and my daughter is in GA (we are in SC). We use Skype for voice, but TokBox for the video so we can have 3way video. Each of us have a web cam in our living area, so it is almost as good as sitting around the living room and chatting.

Tonight happens to be our weekly call schedule. Cool :cool:
 
My son is in Texas, and my daughter is in GA (we are in SC). We use Skype for voice, but TokBox for the video so we can have 3way video. Each of us have a web cam in our living area, so it is almost as good as sitting around the living room and chatting.

Tonight happens to be our weekly call schedule. Cool :cool:

Rick how long have you used TokBox and do they charge for it??
Been looking for something that will work for a group chat on the Organ builds
 
can the police eave-drop into your call [skye] or the hackers
 
Too easy to slip into Never-Never land with this subject.
What NSA has to tap in, listen in, watch in, etc. is simply scary.
Saw a documentary on it once. They want us to know what they are capable of doing.
Answer is: Yes.
 
Rick how long have you used TokBox and do they charge for it??
Been looking for something that will work for a group chat on the Organ builds


Been using for a few months. Free for home use.

I hear Skype has a beta now that supports multiple video sessions. I will probably try it out for next weeks chat.

When we use TokBox, we mute the TokBox audio since the audio of Skype is better.
 
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